Econ70

China could reduce its Treasury holdings to signal displeasure with US trade policy, but I doubt it. In 2015 and 2016, foreign nations dumped lots of Treasuries and nothing happened. Moreover, where would the Chinese invest the money? Repatriating it…

The Friday File: 2.5% of American order steak rare, 22.5% request theirs medium-rare and 37.5% ask it be medium. Medium-well is requested 25.8% of the time, and well done 11.7%. The cut grilled least, prime rib with almost 40% of…

Since 2014, thanks to cord-cutting due to streaming services, non-sports TV viewership has declined 11% at NBC to 6.8 million persons, 22% at CBS to 8.3 million, 25% at ABC to 5.9 million, and 27% at Fox to 4.2 million.…

In 2018, there were 3.79 million births, a 2% decline from 2017, the fourth straight year of declines, and the lowest level since 1986! Births have fallen in 10 of the last 11 years! Reasons include a decline in unplanned…

Since 1896, the Dow has fallen by 2% or more in a day 1,011 times, or an average of once every 33 trading days, or an average of 7.6 times a year. That means that with the Dow now at…

The imposition of added tariffs on some Chinese goods and new tariffs on others will boost inflation by 0.1% to 0.3% depending on the inflation measure, with goods inflation and core inflation being pushed up more than services inflation or…

The Friday File: This past Tuesday, a Claude Monet painting titled Haystacks (of which there are 25, most of which are in one of 15 museums) sold for $110.7 million, a record price for a Monet and for an Impressionist…

The yield curve inverts if the short end rises above the long end, or if the long end declines below the short end. In the former, the Fed is raising rates to reduce inflation and accidentally drives us into recession.…

The share of Americans aged 25-54 in the labor force hit 82.6% in 1/19, the best level since 8/09. The main reason is rising labor force participation of young women. Since the end of the recession on 6/30/09, the only…

Existing tariffs on Chinese imports and Chinese retaliatory tariffs reduce US GDP by 0.15 of a point. Last week’s tariff increase from 10% to 25% on $200 billion of Chinese goods will decrease GDP by another 0.15. A further 25%…