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New housing, and thus existing housing, has become increasingly more expensive because of burdensome land use regulations, increasingly costly building codes, a labor shortage, and higher input costs. Another rarely mentioned reason is industry consolidation. The share of homes built…

The number of ex-servicepersons in the US is 18 million, or 7% of the adult population. In the House of Representatives, it is 18%, and it is 19% in the Senate. While vastly overrepresented, this is a far cry from…

The number of applications to start a new business fell from 27,000/week to 18,000/week during the second half of March and April. By the end of May, applications had fully recovered but they kept rising and peaked in early July…

Business closures among law firms are very low at 1.6/1,000 firms; architects at 2/1,000 and accountants at 2.9/1,000 are also profoundly low. Conversely, burger joints at 56/1,000 and breakfast and brunch restaurants at 57/1,000 have suffered profoundly. The state with…

The Friday File: For the first time since 2005 and the second time ever, the Atlantic hurricane season has exceeded 21 named storms. As such, the weather service has run out of Latin alphabet storm names (Q, U, X, Y…

August new home sales came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 1,011,000, and July’s sales were revised up from 901,000 to 965,000. New home sales are up a whopping 43.2% Y-o-Y and 14.9% YTD! As for August…

In the Eurozone, a key monthly purchasing manager sentiment index for service providers declined from 50.5 to 47.6 in September (below 50 signals contraction), its worst reading since May; for manufacturers the index rose from 51.7 to 53.7, tops in…

Economists believe in free markets and the prices and outcomes they produce because they are generally much more efficient than the alternatives. Some, however, argue that government should have a larger role and point, for example, to the very high…

There have been 119 Supreme Court Justices. The current number of nine came to be in 1869 after six earlier efforts. The longest serving, William O. Douglas at 36.6 years. Justice Ginsburg was on the bench for 27.1 years. She…

The Friday File: The fifth most popular US sports team name (including high schools, junior colleges, colleges, semi-pro leagues, and all professional leagues) is Wildcats with 969 teams. In fourth place is Panthers with 1,124 and in third is Bulldogs…