70 Words

The Friday File: Zipf’s Law describes the relationship between the rank of a word and its frequency, namely that word frequency is inversely proportional to word rank. For example, the most common word will appear twice as often as the…

On one hand, the Fed sees short- to medium-term inflationary pressures building from a 1000% tariff increase, OBBBA fiscal stimulus, possibly rising wages due to manufacturing job onshoring, combined with the number of unemployed manufacturing workers available to work near…

While cinching a trade deal with Japan is good news, hold the applause. Pre-trade war, the tariff on non-agricultural Japanese imports was 1.6%, it’s now 9x higher at 15%. Consumers will eventually feel this. The deal also calls for $550…

I expect annualized 25Q2 GDP growth of about 2%, resulting in 25H1 annualized growth of, at best, 1%, vs. 2.3% for 24H1. As for 25H2, annualized GDP growth will probably be 1%, meaning CY2025 growth of 1%, anemic, but not…

Housing starts continued falling in June, dropping 0.5% Y-o-Y from 6/24’s already depressed level and are at their worst June level (outside Covid) since 2019. Making matters worse, single-family activity fell 4.6% M-o-M, after falling 2.3% in May and is…

The Friday File: The NBA LA Lakers recently sold for $10 billion. While a fortune, in time it’ll probably be considered a bargain. A recently constructed investment index of NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL teams shows that owners of clubs…

Since 1/20/25, the average effective tariff on US imported goods has risen from 2.5% to now 16.6% and importantly, above Liberation Day levels. Trump 1.0 lifted from just 1.5%. If the current 8/1/25 tariffs come to pass, the tariff rate…

June Y-o-Y inflation was 2.7%, up from 2.4% in May, while core CPI rose 2.9%, up from 2.8% in May. Prior to this month, inflation had been on a slow but steady decline. While the evidence is clearly mixed, car…

Since 2000, labor productivity has risen by 54%, during the same period output/worker in construction has fallen 8%. It’s due to a combination of fragmentation due to overregulation leading to underinvestment. Research has shown that construction firms with over 500…

While the OBBBA is economically only marginally stimulative, and only in the short run, the recent 12% slide in the greenback is akin to hefty interest rate cut. Also, OPEC’s recent announcement of an increase in production should further reduce…