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Besides lifting the debt ceiling until at least 7/21 and avoiding a government shutdown till 10/1/21, the recently agreed upon two-year budget deal boosts FY2020 discretionary spending by a total of $49 billion compared to FY2019. Defense spending will rise…
In the year ending 3/19, foreign purchases of US residential real estate declined to $77.90 billion, down from a peak of $153.01 billion two years ago, their weakest level in six years. Chinese buying activity declined the most; by 50%…
I’m not sure what problem Facebook’s newly proposed cryptocurrency, Libra, solves. For those with a bank account and credit card, Libra solves no problem. For the unbanked, theoretically it’s great, but how do you buy Libra absent a credit card…
During the first nine months of FY2019, the deficit rose $140 billion, or 23.1%, to $747.1 billion. Meanwhile, revenues totaled $2.61 trillion, up 3%, while spending hit $3.36 trillion, up 7%, both record highs. The jump in receipts included a…
The Friday File: Tomorrow at 4:17pm EDT is the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s lunar landing! Armstrong subsequently set foot on the Moon at 10:56pm EDT; Aldrin joined him 19 minutes later. That ended the Space Race…
June retail sales rose a surprising 0.4% and are probably running at their best sustained pace in five years! June manufacturing activity rose a solid 0.4%, June job growth was excellent, and the trade wars are calming down. All this…
Border apprehensions steadily rose from essentially nothing in 1960 to slightly over 1.5 million/year from 1996 through 2000. Apprehensions then steadily declined to a low of about 400,000/year in 2010 through 2018. However, in 2019, border apprehensions are way up…
OPEC and Russia recently extended a production cap until 3/20. However, OPEC’s share of global production is 39.2%, down from 42.2%, while US share is 14.5%, up from 10.9%. To date, most of the decline has resulted from sharp involuntary…
Chinese imports sagged a stunning 7.3% in June, suggesting weak demand. Moreover, auto sales fell for a 12th straight month in June and YTD are at their weakest since 2015. Also, June producer prices were flat, the weakest showing since…
The Friday File: Based on data through 2018, India, in 2014, had the largest number of registered voters for a national democratic election with 834,101,479. The US is a distant second with 214,109,367 registered voters in 2016. Indonesia is not…