Econ70

The Friday File: Bok Tower Gardens of Florida won the 2025 Waterlily Weigh-Off, the third annual competition hosted by the Denver Botanic Gardens in August. Bok Tower Gardens’ lily pad supported a record-setting 183 pounds before it started to sink,…

With suddenly weak job growth, there is some debate about whether this is due to a lack of demand for workers by firms or a lack of supply due to new immigration policies. Make no mistake, it’s primarily declining labor…

Unsurprisingly, the Fed reduced rates 25bps. What’s surprising; one FOMC member, its newest, sees more than 50bps in cuts this year, nine expect two 25bps cuts, two see one cut, and seven see none. The median is two cuts, but…

The 30-year mortgage rate is now 6.35%, down from over 7% in January. As a result, a buyer with a $3,000/month budget can now afford a $466,000 home with a 20% downpayment. At 7%, the same budget would only allow…

An economic slowdown paired with rate cuts, absent a profit recession, is great for equities. Even if earnings multiples compress, falling borrowing costs and resilient earnings support stocks. A weaker dollar adds another lift. Corporations can further boost ROE by…

The Friday File: Sturgis, SD, population 7,000 grows during Sturgis Week to 700,000, an incomprehensible increase of 100x, 10,000%. Nevada’s Black Rock City population goes from 0 to 70,000 during Burning Man, but it’s not normally a city. NH’s Laconia…

While mortgage debt is up $2.88 trillion from the Housing Bubble peak, as a percentage of GDP it’s 44.6%. During the Housing Bubble, that percentage exceeded 70%. Better yet, the last time mortgage debt as a percentage of GDP was…

Last year, American, Delta, United, and Southwest posted a combined $12 billion passenger operating loss but still recorded $13.5 billion in net profits. While freight helped, loyalty programs that bind customers to airlines and airline credit cards were primarily why.…

The BLS annual preliminary payroll benchmark revisions, based on state government unemployment insurance data, showed a huge 911,000 downward revision to employment growth for the year ending 3/25. This means the economy was slowing before Trump entered office, and that…

August net job growth was dismal at 22,000, with June and July revised down by 21,000 combined. In CY24, job growth averaged 167,000/month, but in the four months since Liberation Day it’s averaged 26,750/month. Of 511,000 private jobs created in…