Month: August 2023

July housing starts were at a seasonally adjusted annualized pace of 1,452,000, slightly below the four-year average of 1,489,000. Interestingly, house size keeps shrinking from a peak of 2,519 sq. ft. in 15Q1 to a 21Q4 post-Covid peak of 2,335…

In 23Q2, total household debt was $17.06 trillion, up trivially from $17.05 trillion in 23Q1. Compared to 19Q4 when it was $14.16 trillion, debt has risen $2.9 trillion, 21.3%. While that seems substantial, inflation from 19Q4 through 23Q2 was 17.6%,…

While July retail sales came in strong at 0.7% M-o-M, inflation-adjusted Y-o-Y growth was -0.12, the sixth straight month of Y-o-Y declines. Moreover, after reaching an inflation-adjusted 4/21 sales peak of $232.7 billion, sales have been flat since. Lastly, retail…

The delinquency rate for mortgages on one-to-four-unit properties fell to 3.37% at the end of 23Q2. That’s down 27bps Y-o-Y and is the lowest delinquency rate since record keeping began in 1979. The Y-o-Y conventional loan delinquency rate fell 35bps,…

The Friday File: The largest asteroid crater on Earth is the South African Vredefort Crater that measures 186 miles in diameter. The second largest is the Chicxulub Crater in Mexico with a diameter of 112 miles. Canada has the third…

Inflation for the year ending 7/23 as measured by the CPI rose from 3% to 3.2%. While that appears to be a setback, core CPI ticked down from 4.8% Y-o-Y in June to 4.7% Y-o-Y in July, its best reading…

For the year ending 5/23, firms allowing their employees to fully work from home increased staffing levels by 5.6%. Mandating one day in the office/week reduced growth to 4.8%, requiring two days/week lowered it to 4.7%. Working three days/week at…

While there’s no chance of getting control of the yawning budget deficit with elections 15 months away, don’t give up hope. I suspect the next Congress and the next presidential election winner will begin to fix things if only because…

July net job growth cooled to 187,000, the second straight month below 200,000, and the weakest two-month performance, excluding Covid, since 19Q4. The cooling’s good, but the unemployment rate fell to 3.5% due to an aging population, a near 53-year…

The Friday File: Since being completed in 1943, the Pentagon has been the world’s largest building, but no longer. The Surat Diamond Bourse, in the Indian state of Gujarat is now the biggest. It contains 7.1 million square feet of…