While single-family starts are up 11% YTD and single-family permits are up 7.2% YTD, multifamily starts are down 1% and multifamily permits are down 17%, suggesting multifamily activity has peaked. Separately, new home sales are strengthening. The 727,000 seasonally-adjusted annual…
Obamacare healthcare exchanges suffer from mispriced insurance. The law requires insurance for the elderly be no more than three times as costly as insurance for the young. But, the elderly consume way more healthcare than the young. This mispricing discourages…
To improve employment outcomes, many states are prohibiting employers from inquiring about the criminal histories of job applicants prior to job offers. While well intended, the unintended consequence of this is that the probability of being employed fell 5.1% for…
In 16Q2, 12.1% of homes with a mortgage were underwater, down from 14.4% a year ago and down from the negative equity peak of an astonishing 31.4% in 12Q1. On average, 19.4% of homes valued in the bottom third of…
The Friday File: While Olympic gold medal winners receive $25,000, silver medalists $15,000 and bronze winners $10,000, courtesy of the US Olympic Committee, they pay income tax on those winnings. Now our braindead Congress wants to make those awards tax…
Annual US healthcare spending is $8,713/person, by far the highest in the world. Switzerland comes next at $6,325/person, followed by Norway at $5,852/person. Canada is 10th at $4,351/person, less than half the US total. Among developed nations, Korea spends the…
January through June 2016 GDP growth was a dismal 1% on an annualized basis. A key culprit, inventories sliced 1.2 percentage points off GDP in Q2 and have now subtracted from GDP growth for 5 straight quarters, the first time…
Despite terrorism and global concerns, American equities are surging. It’s because consumer spending is strong, inflation and wages are rising but pleasantly slowly, bank lending is up, energy prices seem to have bottomed, industrial production is rising and while the…
Household debt rose by $35 billion in Q2, led by a $32 billion rise in auto loans and a pleasant $17 billion jump in credit card balances. Student loan levels were unchanged and mortgage and HELOC debt declined by $7…
The Friday File: Since 2006, ten artists have turned over $1 billion at auction. Top of the list: Pablo Picasso at $3.43 billion, followed by Andy Warhol at $3.38 billion, Zhang Daqian at $2.03 billion, Qi Baishi at $1.91 billion…