Month: December 2019

I wish to take this opportunity to thank you all for your ongoing interest in my daily economics blog. You all enrich my life in many ways and I am deeply appreciative. I wish you and yours the best year…

Florida is the nation’s third most populous state, behind California and Texas, with a population of 21,299,325. For the nine-year period ending 7/1/19 it grew 13.3%; third fastest of all states and behind just Texas, Utah (and DC). At $1.06…

The Friday File: A decade ago, it was shown that public firms with clever ticker symbols (like BABY, BOOM, CAKE, FUN, CASH) performed twice as well as all shares on the NYSE and NASDAQ between 1984 and 2006. A fluke?…

While unemployment is at a 50-year low at 3.5%, wage growth is relatively weak, and at 3% has declined over the past year. This is partly because job growth in manufacturing has stopped and partly because those reentering the job…

Inflation, measured by the Christmas Price Index and based on purchasing each day’s items once in “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” rose just 0.2% in 2019 to $38,993.59. Excluding the costliest item, seven swans-a-swimming at $13,125, will reduce the cost…

Tonight Festivus is celebrated. Conceived of by author Daniel O’Keefe and celebrated as far back as 1966, the date celebrates the anniversary of Mr. O’Keefe’s first date with his future wife, Deborah. The holiday was made famous in 1996 when…

The Friday File: The holiday of Hanukkah begins this Sunday night. This is the 2,184th time the holiday celebration commemorating the liberation of Jerusalem and the rededication of Second Temple will be celebrated. Over the course of the eight-day holiday,…

While the US and Chinese economies look to be stabilizing and even strengthening, the same cannot be said for Europe. Business activity there is growing at its slowest rate since 2013. Manufacturing activity is in recession and is steadily deteriorating,…

US GDP only includes legal activities. It really should include black-market activities like illegal drug sales, prostitution, theft, gambling, and so on. If it did, GDP would be about 1%, or $210 billion larger; the GDP of Alabama. In 1980,…

November housing starts came in at an annualized rate of 1.365 million, up a strong 13.6% Y-o-Y. Single-family starts were up 16.7% Y-o-Y; multifamily was up 4.4% Y-o-Y. Despite these seemingly strong Y-o-Y numbers, YTD starts are up a scant…