At 3.5%, 18Q3 GDP growth was strong, but noticeably down from 4.2% growth in 18Q2. Household consumption grew a healthy 4%. Government spending rose a vigorous 3.3% and inventories rose by 2.1%, but both gains are transitory and thus short…
The Friday File: This is the last year Volkswagen will produce a version of its famed Beetle. Production of the original Bug ended in 2003; the longest automobile production run ever. There were a record 21 million produced, surpassing the…
For the first time ever, EU bureaucrats rejected the budget of an EU nation, Italy. While markets suspect a Rome/Brussels compromise will be achieved with a lower deficit than the proposed 2.4%, the real problems are Italian banks. They hold…
September new home sales came in at a dismal rate of 533,000, down 13.2% Y-o-Y. Worse, sales for June, July and August were all revised down. Sales are now up just 3.5% YTD. Sales in CY2018 may well be less…
Tonight, if the Mega-Millions jackpot is not shared, the winner will enjoy the largest lotto prize in world history at $1.6 billion. Two changes created these huge jackpots; doubling of the price to $2/ticket and reducing the chance of winning…
On 8/31/18, there were 7.136 million job openings, well up from 6.044 million a year ago. At the same time, the number of unemployed persons on 8/31/18 numbered 6.234 million, well down from 7.127 million on 8/31/17. That is, a…
The Friday File: In 2017, Americans spent $72 billion on pets. That is equal to the GDP of the 70th largest nation in the world, edging out Myanmar and Luxembourg. $30 billion went for food, $18 billion for veterinary care,…
Seasonally-adjusted September housing starts totaled a soft 1.201 million. But Y-o-Y, starts rose 3.7% and YTD starts are up 6.4%, which is OK. Beating CY2017 numbers will be very hard as 17Q4 starts ended strong. That said, while multifamily is…
The FY2018 deficit totaled $779 billion or 3.9% of GDP, up 17% from the FY2017 deficit of $666; 3.5% of GDP. While that doesn’t look bad, the details are troubling. Outlays as a percentage of GDP declined from 20.7% to…
While predicting the cause of the next recession is impossible, here are probabilities based on all recessions in the seven largest democracies since 1960. 26% of the time it was monetary policy, next came bursting of a credit bubble at…