70 Words

For the year ending 5/23, firms allowing their employees to fully work from home increased staffing levels by 5.6%. Mandating one day in the office/week reduced growth to 4.8%, requiring two days/week lowered it to 4.7%. Working three days/week at…

While there’s no chance of getting control of the yawning budget deficit with elections 15 months away, don’t give up hope. I suspect the next Congress and the next presidential election winner will begin to fix things if only because…

July net job growth cooled to 187,000, the second straight month below 200,000, and the weakest two-month performance, excluding Covid, since 19Q4. The cooling’s good, but the unemployment rate fell to 3.5% due to an aging population, a near 53-year…

The Friday File: Since being completed in 1943, the Pentagon has been the world’s largest building, but no longer. The Surat Diamond Bourse, in the Indian state of Gujarat is now the biggest. It contains 7.1 million square feet of…

In the year ending 3/23, foreigners spent $53.31 billion buying U.S. homes, the sixth straight annual decline, and the lowest level since at least 2011. Foreign sales volume peaked in 2017 at $153.01 billion. From 4/22-3/23, foreign sales were less…

23Q2 GDP growth at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 2.4% gives the feeling that a recession is not near. However, in 23Q2 the Conference Board’s index of coincident economic indicators was at a 0.8% annual rate, while the index…

Today, Fitch Ratings downgraded the U.S.’s credit rating by one notch from a pristine AAA to AA+. In 2011, S&P was the first to downgrade the country’s rating from AAA to AA+, and that downgrade caused substantial market ructions. This…

Rather than weaken in the face of steep increases in the Fed funds rate, the first estimate of 23Q2 GDP accelerated to an annualized seasonally and inflation adjusted rate of 2.4%, up from 2% in 23Q1 and down slightly from…

The Friday File: Australian fitness guru Daniel Scali recently recaptured the record for the most pushups in one hour with an utterly amazing, and shoulder burning total of 3,249, or an astounding 54.15 pushups/minute! The previous record of 3,206 was…

Yesterday, the Dow Jones Industrials Average rose for the 13th day in a row. The last time that occurred was on 1/20/87, almost 40 years ago. Had the Dow Jones risen today it would have been the 14th day in…