Posts Tagged ‘Graphsandlaughs’
Lousy Legislators
The most active Congress, as measured by the number of bills passed into law, excluding private bills, was the 84th (1955-1956) which passed 1,028 bills. Eisenhower (R) was President; Lyndon Johnson (D) was Senate Majority Leader and Sam Rayburn (D) Speaker of the House. The least active was the 112th (2011-2012) which passed 238 bills.…
Read MoreHazardous Headwinds
While the economy is improving, it’s now facing huge headwinds. They include the need for a Continuing Resolution, hitting the debt ceiling, Syria and its impact on oil prices, who will be the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the start date of tapering, fear about whether Abenomics will work in Japan, and concerns about…
Read MorePlunging Purchases
Purchases of new homes plunged 13.4% in July to only 394,000, the steepest drop in years underscoring the uneven pace of recovery. Worse, April, May and June new home sales were revised sharply lower and are officially in the books at just 446,000, 439,000 and 445,000 respectively. Moreover, the sales rate is only 6.8% higher…
Read MoreAccidental Growth
While Congress will inevitably pass a Continuing Resolution to fund the government beyond 9/30/13 when the current CR expires, a key question is at what spending level. If current funding levels are carried into FY14, as is usually the case for short term CRs (but maybe not this time), they would exceed the 2014 budget…
Read MoreHarmful Housing
Since housing is long-lived, when a city chronically loses population, the existing housing stock lowers house prices, preventing new construction and renovation activity, leading to deterioration in the housing stock. While cheap housing attracts the poor and slows population declines, it also makes it harder for the city (think Detroit) to turn its economic fortunes…
Read MoreFederal Reserve Flexibility
The just-released minutes of the Federal Reserve’s July meeting are a Rorschach test. For those reluctant to taper, there’s a nod to the still struggling labor market and the very low inflation rate. Conversely, others felt that the recent rise in interest rates would exert little restraint and that easier lending standards would help juice…
Read MoreHot Lots
In a move to streamline operations and cash in on the home building renaissance, Weyerhauser is selling its home-building unit. The prize, 27,000 lots including 18,000 in market-constrained litigation happy California, mostly in L.A. and San Diego. Assuming no goodwill, if the home-building unit sells for $3 billion, that’s just $110,000/lot. At $4 billion it’s…
Read MoreFired, Not Hired
Healthy labor markets consist of many things including low rates of involuntary termination and high rates of hiring. Usually they’re highly correlated. Not now. First time unemployment insurance claims at 332,000/week are at levels last seen in 11/07 before the Great Recession. Yet total hires at 4.2 million in June are now where they were…
Read MoreMileage Miscalculation
Automobile regulation that improves fuel efficiency raises the price of new cars. That in turn raises the price of used cars, as some buyers avoid higher new car costs by buying used ones. This unsurprisingly reduces the number of used cars that get scrapped. And since used cars have worse gas mileage than new ones,…
Read MoreFly Away
Despite allowing Delta to buy Northwest, United to buy Continental, and Southwest to buy AirTran, the Department of Justice has come down hard against the US Airways-American merger. Years ago the industry was hemorrhaging money and it was in everyone’s interest to have a stable and profitable airline industry. Now that it is, reduced competition…
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