Econ70

The Friday File: This year’s Boston Red Sox are, to date, one of the best baseball teams ever assembled. Their current .698 winning percentage puts them on pace for 113 wins; fourth most in a season. The only teams with…

July new housing sales were slightly disappointing at 627,000, but they’re up 7.2% YTD and should end 2018 up at least 6% compared to 2017. For the macro economy, it doesn’t much matter. Back in 2003, well before the Housing…

While income disparities are large in the US, they are large in the EU too. Based on purchasing power, the region of Inner London – West has the highest per capita GDP in the EU at 611% of the average,…

Total household debt first peaked in 08Q3 at $12.68 trillion, 85.5% of GDP. $9.99 trillion was housing debt, $2.69 trillion non-housing debt. Household debt then declined steadily, bottoming in 13Q2 at $11.15 trillion, or 67% of GDP; $8.38 was housing…

Housing starts were disappointing in July, for the second straight month. That said, starts are up 6.2% YTD which is OK. Single-family starts were up 2.7% Y-o-Y and 0.9% M-o-M, while multifamily starts were down 9.6% Y-o-Y and 3.1% M-o-M.…

The Friday File: Yesterday legendary singer and songwriter Aretha Franklin died at 76. During her spectacular career, she won 18 Grammys, sold 75 million albums, had 17 Billboard pop chart top 10 songs, and quit flying in 1983 preferring a…

Last week, NYC imposed a series of regulations that last one year on Lyft/Uber that will primarily reduce their supply of drivers. Until now, profit maximization for Uber/Lyft simply meant having more drivers. That gave Lyft/Uber no incentive to optimize…

One week from today, the current bull market will reach 3,453 days in duration, surpassing the longest bull market of 3,452 days which went from 10/11/90 through 3/24/00. During this near 10-year period, US equities have returned about 420%, excluding…

CY2018 US GDP growth should average 3.1%, led by rising employment, strong income gains, tax cuts, increased defense spending and very strong consumer and small business confidence. During CY2019, growth is likely to steadily slow, yet still average a solid…

With the Turkish Lira down 26% last week and 41% YTD, Turkey’s in crisis. The declining lira has pushed inflation to 16%, short-term interest rates to 23%, and its huge debt, over half of which is foreign-denominated, will be much…