Archive for March 2015

With the unemployment rate at 5.5% and the CPI at -0.1%, the Misery Index, the sum of the two numbers, is just 5.4%, its lowest level since April 1959, and slightly less than a quarter of its all-time high of 21.9% set in May 1980. Since the start of the Great Recession, the MI reached…

Six and a half years into Quantitative Easing, GDP and inflation are higher than they would otherwise have been and feared asset bubbles have not generally materialized. However, stock and bond prices have risen, boosting wealth inequality, but the improved labor market reduced unemployment and income inequality. Lastly, higher inflation rates helped borrowers (who tend…

The Friday File: While school closures for bad weather may hurt student achievement, absenteeism profoundly hurts achievement. Each one-day increase in absenteeism lowers math scores by 5% of a standard deviation! Schools deal with school-wide closures by adding days or speeding up the curriculum, but can’t do so with absenteeism. Rather than experimenting with costly…

On the plus side, job growth continues to look very strong and inflation rates appear to be no longer falling. But business investment has been declining for six months and retail sales have been slumping for three. This suggests a resilient and strengthening economy but one that is temporarily slowing with low productivity growth. Added…

After peaking at 3.03 trillion vehicle miles travelled (VMT) during the 12 months ending 11/2007, VMT hit a cyclical low of 2.94 trillion miles during the 12 months ending 11/2011. Finally, VMT hit a record 3.05 trillion during the 12 months ending 1/2015, taking 85 months to surpass the previous record. Per capita/year VMT remains…

The number of Americans who moved in 2013 was 35.7 million, 11.5% of the population. Since record keeping began in 1948, the percentage of movers has steadily declined from about 20% to just 11.5% today. However, because of population growth due to the Boomers, the number of movers steadily rose from 28.7 million in 1948…

US crude oil inventories are at 29 days, their highest level since 1985, and are at 60% of storage capacity vs. 48% a year ago. In Cushing, OK (the delivery point for WTI futures contracts) inventories are at 77% of capacity at 54.4 million barrels. That was 100% of capacity as recently as 2011, but…

With the recent sharp decline in energy prices, the percentage of household spending devoted to energy in Q4/14 was 4.9%, its lowest level since Q1/09. The last time it was below 5% for an entire year was 2003. The lowest quarterly percentage this century was 3.97% in Q1/02, while the highest was 6.59% in Q3/08.…

In today’s press conference Fed Chairwoman Yellen told us the Fed might raise rates as soon as June, but then quickly backtracked playing the markets masterfully. She cited the strengthening dollar as hurting manufacturing and weakening inflationary trends. Moreover, while the Fed expects the unemployment rate to keep falling, better wage growth isn’t expected due…