Econ70

With 30-year mortgage rates steadily climbing and now at 7%, it’s unsurprising the NAHB Housing Market Index fell to 38 in October, the 10th straight monthly decline, and outside of Covid, its worst level since 8/12. First-time mortgage applications are…

While Beijing was to release its GDP data today, it’s been postponed indefinitely. Hours before that announcement, China’s top planning agency said growth had “rebounded significantly” and remained “outstanding”. A raft of other economic data was also suddenly and indefinitely…

The interest rate on the 10-Year Treasury has risen for 11 straight weeks. This is the first time this has happened since at least 1978. Until this recent streak, the longest such run had been nine weeks on just two…

The Friday File: Earlier this week, the Chemistry Nobel Prize was awarded to the trio of Carolyn Bertozzi, Morten Meldal, and K. Barry Sharpless for click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry, whatever they are. The key, this is Shapless’ second Nobel…

August UK GDP declined for the second time in three months. Moreover, service activity also fell in August, and industrial production and manufacturing activity are sinking. Additionally, option bets on further pound weakness are at their most extreme since Brexit…

While last year’s budget deficit (FY21) was $2.8 trillion, the preliminary estimate of the FY22 deficit, which ended 9/30/22, is $1.4 trillion, a decline of 50%. This total includes $426 billion for student-loan debt relief but excludes income-driven repayment relief,…

House prices peaked in late 1979 and it took 6.5 years for inflation-adjusted prices to recover. They next peaked in mid-1989 and this time it took 11 years. When they topped out again in mid-2005, it took until late 2020,…

Employers added 263,000 jobs in September, an unsustainably fast pace. The unemployment rate fell from 3.7% to 3.5%, matching a 50-year low, partly because 57,000 persons dropped out of the labor force, reducing the labor force participation rate from 62.4%…

The Friday File: The singular of agenda in Latin is agendum, just like candelabra, stamina, insignia, and trivia have undergone grammatical change to become singular in English. This fate is (regrettably) befalling data and will eventually befall memoranda and strata.…

To regain control of oil prices that have fallen 33% since mid-June, yesterday OPEC+ announced a 2 million bbl/day production cut. However, OPEC+ is currently underproducing by several million bbl/day. Thus, the cut will probably reduce actual production by about…