Econ70

The Friday File: In 2018, Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand trust company, reduced its workweek from five days to four. Productivity jumped 20%. Last October, the firm made the switch permanent. This past summer, Microsoft Japan trialed the same thing.…

The US September trade deficit was -$52.5 billion, down from -$55 billion in August. More importantly, imports fell 1.7% M-o-M and -0.8% Y-o-Y while exports declined 0.9% M-o-M and -0.4% Y-o-Y. Declining trade volumes are a clear sign of global…

A key reason existing home sales have remained lackluster despite record low unemployment and spectacularly low interest rates is homeowners now stay in their homes for about 13 years, up from eight years as recently as 2010. Thus, the inventory…

Last decade, European growth and inflation were decent because excess savings in Germany and the north were matched by excess spending in Greece and other southern nations. Since the sovereign-debt crisis, southern nations have become much more frugal out of…

Despite the GM strike and the loss of 17,000 Census workers, 128,000 new jobs were created in October. Moreover, there were upward revisions totaling 95,000 to August and September. And, the labor force participation rate hit 63.3%; best since 9/13!…

The Friday File: Last week, a small window into the promise of quantum computing was opened. A mathematical calculation that would have taken a supercomputer 10,000 years to solve was done in 200 seconds. Rather than using bytes that are…

US GDP grew at a modest 1.9% in 19Q3, down from 2% in 19Q2 and 3.1% in 19Q1. As was the case in 19Q2, consumer spending led the way. Other areas of strength; federal, state and local government spending, and…

Unsurprisingly, the Fed cut rates a quarter-point. But the benefits of the cuts are waning. That’s because home construction has shrunk from about 5% to 3.5% of GDP, the wealth effect has weakened as equities and homeownership are increasingly concentrated…

In 1936, the number of pages in the Federal Register (which provides a rough sense of the flow of new and changed regulations) was about 3,000. By 1970, it had grown to 20,000, and by 1980, it further expanded to…

In FY2019, the budget deficit was $984 billion, up from $779 in FY2018. This is the largest deficit in seven years, and the fourth year in a row the deficit has risen; the longest stretch since the early 1980s. The…