Archive for March 2016

Between 1950 and 2000, half of electricity generated came from coal, now it’s just 32%, and the percentage coming from hydro has steadily fallen from 30% in 1950 to 6%. Conversely, natural gas, which was just 10% during the 1980s, is 33% while nuclear power went from 0% in 1970 to 20% by 1990 and…

While inventory of homes is low, commonly used measures such as months of inventory or number of units for sale, severely underestimate the shortage. The number of units for sale divided by the number of households has been flat at 1.7% since early 2013, its lowest level ever! During the housing boom it was as…

The unambiguous upside to quantitative easing is that in 2015, the Fed sent $97.8 billion in profits to the Treasury, surpassing last year’s record of $96.9 billion. These remittances have grown as the Fed’s portfolio of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities has grown from $1 trillion, before the financial crisis, to $4.5 trillion today. These payments…

Q4/15 GDP growth was recently revised up to 1.4%. The data continue to show an economy being driven primarily by consumer spending on services and secondarily by housing. It’s being held back by business investment, manufacturing, energy, bloated inventories and exports. Business profits continue to shrink but employee compensation was 53.6% of GDP in Q4,…

The Friday file: In the 1960s, 8.8% of songs in the Billboard Hot 100 had a one word title. That jumped to 9.7% in the 70s, 11.1% in the 80s, 13.2% in the 90s, 19.9% in the 00s and 23.2% in the 10s. Since 1960, Drake is the artist with the shortest average number of…

Financial conditions are much better than they were just weeks ago. Equities are up, yield spreads are down, the dollar has weakened and the VIX or “fear gauge” is at its lowest level since August. Risk is suddenly appealing. Should the Fed now raise rates? No, things are better because the Fed doesn’t plan to…

Mortgage equity withdrawal as a percentage of disposable personal income peaked at 6% in 1985. It then steadily declined, bottoming out at 0% in 1994. It then reversed direction, peaking at 9% during the three years ending June 2006, an annual amount equal to $900 billion! It then went into freefall, bottoming at -8% in…

Since the end of WWII, the average recession has lasted 11.1 months and the average recovery, 58.4 months. The Great Recession was 18 months, the longest recession since 1929. The recovery, now in its 81th month, is the 4th longest recovery since recording began in 1854. The longest recovery ever, 120 months! Interestingly, the current…

This past week, for the 54th week in a row, fewer than 300,000 persons sought new unemployment benefits, the best such streak since the 17-month period ending 1/5/74! The current streak just surpassed the 50 week dotcom sub 300,000 streak ending 7/29/00. Of course, in 1974 the number of working Americans was just 78.1 million…