Archive for 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 ever in annualized, seasonally risk-adjusted terms. May it be a year of full employment, large…

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 trillion, its economy is the fourth largest behind California, Texas and NY. These numbers will…

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? In an update covering the years 2006 through 2018, the clever tickers again performed twice…

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 market have very limited skills. However, the major reason is the percentage of new jobs…

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 to $25,868.59. Conversely, purchasing all 364 items will cost you $170,298.03. Since the index began…

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 Daniel’s son, Dan, wrote it into a Seinfeld episode he co-wrote called “The Strike”. Holiday…

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, 44 candles are burned. Two the first night, three the second, and so on. This…

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, luckily the service sector is doing satisfactorily. 19Q4 Eurozone GDP growth will probably be just…

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, GDP would have been 4% bigger. Back then drugs were 2% of GDP, but just…

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 0.6%. This is because 2018 started well but ended badly as rates rose; this year,…