Econ70

In a surprise to nobody, the Fed, after raising rates at 10 consecutive meetings over 15 months, left rates unchanged. However, today’s action was hardly benign. Powell elegantly kept the committee united around tightening policy without raising rates. By signaling…

The Y-o-Y percent change in cardboard box demand as measured by the three-month moving average (which is used to reduce monthly volatility) is down 8.3%. This is the largest decline since the Great Recession when demand fell 12%. The last…

While last week’s first-time unemployment claims were at their highest level since the week ending 10/30/21, the rise in continuing claims is more concerning. Currently, 19 states show a 25% Y-o-Y increase in continuing claims, the highest percentage outside a…

The Friday File: Last month, the SEC’s whistleblower program paid out a gargantuan award of $229 million to one recipient. This blew away the previous record of a $114 million award to an individual in 2020. This most recent award…

Earlier this week, in a somewhat surprising move, the Bank of Canada bumped rates 25bps to 4.875%, after a two-meeting pause in hikes, and the Reserve Bank of Australia also raised rates, it’s 12th rate hike since 5/22, by 25bps…

The largest firm in the U.S. by revenue is, for the 11th year in a row, Walmart, with sales of $611 billion. In second is Amazon at $514 billion, followed by ExxonMobile at $414 billion, and Apple at $394 billion.…

In 2019, venture capitalists raised $3.3 billion from investors for investment in various stage private crypto firms. In 2020, the amount grew to $5.5 billion, to $14.4 billion in 2021, and $21.6 billion in 2022. So far this year, the…

May payrolls grew by a strong 339,000, March and April employment was revised up by 93,000, and wage growth remained strong at 4.3%, largely unchanged since 1/23. But the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.7%, its highest rate since 10/22,…

The Friday File: The highest price paid at auction for a pair of sneakers is $2.2 million in 2023 for a pair of Nike Air Jordan 13 ‘The Last Dance’ worn by Michael Jordan in the 1998 NBA finals. Next…

Between 2000-2010, the housing stock rose 15.8 million and the number of households rose 11.2 million. Thus, vacancies rose 4.6 million and the vacancy rate rose 2.4 percentage points. There were plenty of houses. Conversely, between 2010-2020 the number of…