Month: April 2024
If TikToc gets banned in the US, and that may take a while as the courts will be involved, the biggest winners are likely to be Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, and Alphabet’s YouTube and their respective video platforms Reels and…
Read MoreThe total value of American property, excluding farmland, is $66 trillion. Of that, 25% is commercial, and of that office space is probably $4 trillion. Between 2007 and 2009, US residential real estate lost a third of its value, which…
Read MoreThe Friday File: On 4/20/24, Swedish pole vaulter Mario Duplantis broke his world record, clearing 6.24m, 20.47ft. The old record was 6.23m. Duplantis gets a check of up to $100,000 whenever he breaks the record. The great Ukrainian pole vaulter…
Read MoreBased on a quarterly survey of active managerial job seekers, during calendar year 2020 5% of such individuals relocated to find new employment. In 2021, the percentage fell to 4%, in 2022, the percentage declined further to 3.75%, and in…
Read MorePre-Covid, income growth for the lowest income quartile was almost 5%/year, while for the other quartiles growth was 3.5%/year. By mid-2022, income growth for the bottom and second highest quartiles peaked at almost 8%/year but was nearly 6% for the…
Read MoreOne reason the US economy has performed as well as it has despite rising rates and bank lending reluctance is the rise of private debt and equity. In 2008, banks and fund managers each had $12 trillion in assets. Today,…
Read MoreMarch existing home sales slipped 4.3% M-o-M to a seasonally adjusted rate of 4.19 million, the biggest M-o-M decline since 11/22. The February rise in mortgage rates undoubtedly hurt. Y-o-Y sales eased 3.7% to 4.35 million. March is now the…
Read MoreThe Friday File: The first American roller coaster was a stretch of repurposed coal mine railroad track in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley in 1873. The chuch-chuch sound comes from the 1910 invention of the safety ratchet that prevents coasters from rolling…
Read MoreIn an early April survey of business and academic economists, the percentage predicting a recession within the next two years declined from 39% three months ago to 29%. This is the lowest percentage since 4/22 when recession chances were pegged…
Read MorePre-Covid, quarterly Treasury bond issuance, including new and mostly refinanced maturing debt, was $3 trillion/quarter. Since then, the deficit has jumped, and Treasury has increasingly relied on short-term debt to finance the government. Thus, quarterly Treasury issuance in 24Q1 was…
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