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The Friday File: Until recently, the world record for the tallest stack of M&Ms was jointly held by Silvio Sabba of Italy and Brendan Kelbi of Australia. Recently, however, Will Cutbill, a British civil engineer, broke the Guinness World Record.…

From 1900-1929, marriage rates ranged between 9.3/1,000 persons and 12/1,000. During the depression, rates bottomed at 7.9/1,000 persons in 1932. The rate then steadily rose, peaking in 1946 (following WWII) at 16.4/1,000. Marriage rates then steadily fell and bottomed at…

During June, employers created 850,000 new jobs, the best growth since August 2020’s 1.58 million. Leisure and hospitality led the way with 343,000 jobs. Better yet, unemployment rose to 5.9% from 5.8% as slightly more persons joined the labor market.…

For the week ending 6/18/21, demand for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel were all down compared to the same week in 2019. The four-week moving average for jet fuel was 75% of its 2019 level, for gasoline it was 94%,…

The Friday File: Happy 246th birthday! Back in 1776, the US population was 2.5 million (it’s 332 million now), 56 of whom signed the Declaration of Independence. The current flag became official in 1960 and is the 27th version. We…

The Sars-Cov-2 recession began 3/20. When did it end? The US recession definition is a significant decline in economic activity across the economy that lasts more than a few months. Importantly, recessions end when growth stops contracting. Economic activity bottomed…

May new homes sales came in at a lackluster annualized rate of 769,000/year, well off their 1/21 near 15-year high of 993,000 and their 7/20-1/21 monthly average of over 900,000. Worse, April sales were revised down to 817,000. High prices,…

Last week, NAR reported home prices rose by a stunning 23.6% Y-o-Y. Indexes that compare the change in price of the same home, which is how the CPI measures consumer inflation, and which carefully control for the mix of homes…

Real consumer spending in May fell 0.4% M-o-M. Real durable goods spending declined 4.3%, while real spending on non-durables eased 0.5%. Conversely, real spending on services, which is 60% of overall spending, rose 0.4%. Households with incomes greater than $200,000…

The Friday File: The 500 millionth Swiss Army Knife rolled off the Swiss assembly line in 2017, the first ones were assembled in the 1880s. 45,000 are made/day, and the Work Champ XL offers the most functions, 29, and sells…