The Friday File: Recently completed SoFi stadium in LA, at $5.5 billion, is the most expensive stadium ever built. Next most costly, Metlife Stadium (where the NFL’s Jets and Giants play lifelessly) at $2.03 billion. Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium follows at just $1.9 billion. Of the 30 most costly … [Read more...]

Existing inventory of residential homes is currently just 1.04 million units, or 1.9 months of supply, both record lows. It is partly due to insufficient homebuilding over the past decade, Boomers aging in place, Covid-19 preventing sellers from listing, huge demand by buyers to escape dense cities … [Read more...]

The US savings rate jumped from 13.4% of disposable income in December to 20.5% in January. This means only 20 cents/dollar the government provided in the $600 stimulus checks was spent. This suggest most of the next round of stimi money will probably also be saved, making one question the wisdom of … [Read more...]

Biden’s proposed American Rescue Plan is large, almost 10% of GDP, and is a short-term, one-off event. Other similar historical events include the Korean War, at 4% of GDP, and, as far as the US is concerned, WWI at 13%. Neither of those events led to sustained inflation; inflation rose and then … [Read more...]

The Friday File: Though wildly unproductive in the amount of meaningful legislation passed, the just finished 116th Congress resulted in members of Congress posting 1.57 million tweets and 680,000 Facebook posts, up from 1.03 million and 484,000 in the 114th. In the 114th there were 10 members with … [Read more...]

While Producer Price Inflation is rising, since 1991 its correlation with core CPI is just 15%. Moreover, unemployment is high and global inflation is weak. Finally, while we are experiencing supply constraints, input prices have risen before. Recall that in 6/08 oil was $138/bbl, and as recently as … [Read more...]

While GDP will return to its pre-pandemic level in 21Q3, absent expansionary fiscal policy the labor market will take until 2024. Correcting for worker misclassification by the BLS boosts the reported unemployment rate from 6.1% to 6.9%. Correcting for the sharp labor force participation rate … [Read more...]

January is normally a weak month for home sales. But not this January. Thus, the seasonal adjustments that are always made to allow for month-to-month comparisons are not valid. For example, had last month’s sales occurred in October, the season adjustment would have resulted in 4.3 million … [Read more...]