With industrial output growing at its slowest pace since 2008, retail sales and fixed investment at levels last seen in 2005 and 2001 respectively, China is slowing. To boost lending, expect China to lower interest rates and the reserve requirement…
Many stores offer low-price-match guarantees. On the surface this protects consumers. But it can harm them too. Once convinced that a store will match a lower price, customers may not shop around to find better prices. Moreover, if multiple stores…
Last Friday’s employment numbers were good, not great. 295,000 net new jobs is outstanding, and employment growth during the last year has been the best since 2000. Better yet, almost all the new jobs are in the private sector, almost…
The Friday File: The cost of raising a child from birth to college is $245,340, or $13,630/year for families with annual incomes of $82,790. Of course this excludes college costs and forgone income while being a stay-at-home parent. Conservatively those…
In Obama’s first term, 2.018 million private sector jobs were created. That total beats both of W’s terms, and Bush Sr.’s only term, but doesn’t come close to the over 10 million jobs created in each of Clinton’s terms. However,…
While 3.2 million new jobs were created in 2014 making it a great year for job creation, GDP grew by a very pedestrian 2.4%. This suggests that labor productivity is either growing very slowly, or worse, may be declining. Either…
While Q4 GDP was revised down to 2.2% from just 2.6%, things are better than they appear. The revision was entirely due to slower inventory accumulation. Excluding inventories and trade gets at real domestic demand, and it grew at a…
Net neutrality is a fight over who pays for Internet infrastructure. Now, large content providers (Netflix) help pay, but under the new FCC rules they won’t be allowed to. Thus, households will pay more. But as they are more price…
The Friday File: The evidence that the economy is improving is now irrefutable as the tooth fairy left an average of $4.36/lost tooth in 2014, a whopping increase of 25% from 2013. As recently as 2011, the TF left a…
The January CPI numbers came out today and Y-o-Y inflation was -0.2%, yes, prices actually fell one-fifth of one percent. Before rejoicing, note that deflation is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it boosts worker pay since any raise is…