Econ70

After being the first woman to lead the Fed since its inception in 1913, Janet Yellen is poised to now become the first female Treasury Secretary in its 231-year history. She will push for stricter bank regulations, fiscal help for…

The Friday File: The animated song “Baby Shark” by South Korea’s PinkFong is the most popular YouTube song ever with an amazing 7.1 billion views, about 1 view/person on the planet! In a close second is the song “Despacito” by…

From 1945 through 1980 there were eight recessions, never did it take longer than 24 months for employment to surpass its pre-recession peak. The 1982 recession was different, it took almost 30 months before the pre-recession peak was bettered. Each…

US retail sales rose just 0.3% in October, their slowest pace since spring. This suggest that, at minimum, consumers are becoming more cautious and possibly that the recovery is slowing as job growth softens, virus cases rise, and government assistance…

For the nine months ending 3/20, 14% of all homes purchased were priced at $500,000 or more. Between 4/20 and 6/20, that percentage jumped to 25%! Relatedly, since the start of Covid-19 home buyer median income is $110,800 compared to…

Headline Y-o-Y Personal Consumption Expenditure inflation (PCE) is running at a benign 1.4%, and core PCE inflation, the Fed’s favorite inflation measure, is up a weak 1.5% Y-o-Y, and economy wide GDP inflation is just 1.2%. Relatedly, employment cost inflation…

The Friday File: Based on NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope exoplanet data set and stellar data from the European Space Agency, astronomers estimate that of the 100 billion stars in our galaxy, four billion are sunlike. Assuming 7% of those have…

Before Covid-19, employment in foodservice and drinking places peaked at 12.3 million in 2/20. Employment bottomed in 4/20 at 6.3 million, slightly lower than the 5/91 post-dot-com level! There has since been a recovery, and employment is now 10.2 million,…

Veterans Day was first celebrated as Armistice Day on 11/11/19, the first anniversary of the end of WWI, and in 1938 it became an official holiday. In 1954, President Eisenhower changed the name to Veterans Day to honor all those…

With a stimulus bill to help small business, households and others probably not arriving until February, and its size likely to be relatively small, Covid-19 cases rising, and the spring 2020 stimulus wearing thin, the Fed is increasingly likely to…