Econ70

The latest unsuccessful round of the endless US-China trade negotiations has caused President Trump to announce a new round of 10% tariffs, starting 9/1/19, on the remaining $300 billion of non-tariffed Chinese imports. Commodities, interest rates, and equities tumbled. This…

Earlier today, the Fed did what markets expected; cut rates by a quarter-point. However, the Fed was very sloppy in elucidating why. I might call its explanation “coalescing around some convenient potential rationales” like global slowing. Thus, Powell was utterly…

19Q2 GDP came in at 2.1%, which, while a big decline from 3.1% in 19Q1, is in line with the 2.3% average over the entire record-breaking 121-month recovery we are enjoying. Business spending was negative, the first time since 16Q1,…

While markets were calm today, the rest of the week, maybe not. Tomorrow, the Fed’s favorite inflation measure (core personal consumption expenditure inflation) comes out, on Wednesday the Fed probably announces a quarter-point cut in rates (first time since 2008);…

The Friday File: Assuming each player makes 40 moves, there are conservatively about 10120 possible chess games. Ignoring silly moves, the number falls to a more manageable 1050. For example, after each player has moved just five times, there are…

Besides lifting the debt ceiling until at least 7/21 and avoiding a government shutdown till 10/1/21, the recently agreed upon two-year budget deal boosts FY2020 discretionary spending by a total of $49 billion compared to FY2019. Defense spending will rise…

In the year ending 3/19, foreign purchases of US residential real estate declined to $77.90 billion, down from a peak of $153.01 billion two years ago, their weakest level in six years. Chinese buying activity declined the most; by 50%…

I’m not sure what problem Facebook’s newly proposed cryptocurrency, Libra, solves. For those with a bank account and credit card, Libra solves no problem. For the unbanked, theoretically it’s great, but how do you buy Libra absent a credit card…

During the first nine months of FY2019, the deficit rose $140 billion, or 23.1%, to $747.1 billion. Meanwhile, revenues totaled $2.61 trillion, up 3%, while spending hit $3.36 trillion, up 7%, both record highs. The jump in receipts included a…

The Friday File: Tomorrow at 4:17pm EDT is the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s lunar landing! Armstrong subsequently set foot on the Moon at 10:56pm EDT; Aldrin joined him 19 minutes later. That ended the Space Race…