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While last year’s budget deficit (FY21) was $2.8 trillion, the preliminary estimate of the FY22 deficit, which ended 9/30/22, is $1.4 trillion, a decline of 50%. This total includes $426 billion for student-loan debt relief but excludes income-driven repayment relief,…

House prices peaked in late 1979 and it took 6.5 years for inflation-adjusted prices to recover. They next peaked in mid-1989 and this time it took 11 years. When they topped out again in mid-2005, it took until late 2020,…

Employers added 263,000 jobs in September, an unsustainably fast pace. The unemployment rate fell from 3.7% to 3.5%, matching a 50-year low, partly because 57,000 persons dropped out of the labor force, reducing the labor force participation rate from 62.4%…

The Friday File: The singular of agenda in Latin is agendum, just like candelabra, stamina, insignia, and trivia have undergone grammatical change to become singular in English. This fate is (regrettably) befalling data and will eventually befall memoranda and strata.…

To regain control of oil prices that have fallen 33% since mid-June, yesterday OPEC+ announced a 2 million bbl/day production cut. However, OPEC+ is currently underproducing by several million bbl/day. Thus, the cut will probably reduce actual production by about…

Yesterday, the S&P 500 rose more than 2%, a good day by all measures. That said, this was the 27th time this calendar year that equities have performed this well or better, yet the Index remains down 20% YTD. Do…

Uninsured losses from Hurricane Ian probably total $40-$50 billion including infrastructure damage and cleanup costs. Insured losses are another $65 billion. Lost wages and corporate profits due to closed airports and destroyed facilities probably add another $15-$20 billion in Florida…

Traditionally, economists preferred looking at core inflation, which excludes food and energy vs. headline inflation as core is much less volatile. However, since Covid in 3/20, it’s become wildly volatile. Where in the past Core PCE inflation was bounded by…

The Friday File: Earlier this week, NASA sent a bus-size spacecraft travelling at over 14,000/mph directly into a 525-foot-wide asteroid called Dimorphos, seven million miles away from Earth. Sounds tricky. The aim, to see if the crash alters the asteroids’…

Mortgage rates are getting hit twice over. On 9/27/22, the 10-year Treasury briefly hit 4%, up from 1.52% on 12/31/21, the fastest rise since 1981, as inflation fears worsen. Additionally, the spread between the rising 10-year Treasury and the 30-year…