Last month the Federal Government spent $589B and ran a $314B deficit. To pay for the $314B they didn't have, they said they borrowed $261B from the public and drained their savings account by $73B. That doesn't quite add up but that doesn't surprise anyone. What's $34B between friends? When the Fed's savings account gets low, they have to come [...]
Stocks, REITs, and bonds all rallied last week on the back of what was interpreted as good news on inflation. The CPI report was better than expected, the overall level flat from September to October. Core inflation, less food and energy, was also better than expected at up 0.2%. Producer prices, reported the day after CPI were even better, coming [...]
Retail sales make up about a quarter of GDP, so an important monthly number. I saw a lot of headlines saying this was a disappointing number. But that isn't the case, the print was actually good. Sequentially, expectations were low for this print because September 2023 and October of 2022 were so strong. The sequential number was expected at -.3% [...]
Alhambra CEO Joe Calhoun discusses investor fear over debt, deficit, and interest expense.
No good deed goes unpunished. And how true that is when the government, at any level, gets involved. The federal government has a full-on press pushing Americans to get rid of their gas cars and trucks and embrace the electric vehicle, although it appears there’s not a rush to be the first one on the block with an EV. Currently, [...]
I spend a lot of time asking questions. I don't always have answers to these questions but I think it is critical to ask them. Think about how the consensus might be wrong or, more importantly, how you might be. Question the narrative and try to determine what's important and what's not, who you can ignore, and who merits your [...]
I spend a lot of time thinking about what "everyone" else believes about the economy and markets. If you've been reading my weekly scribblings for any time, you know I have little faith in the soothsayers of this industry. No one knows what the future holds, least of all that group of crystal ball gazers known as economic forecasters. Most [...]
Housing starts rebounded nicely in May to 1631 units from a revised lower 1340 units in April. Permits went up sequentially as well, just not as much. Both series are above the historic mean and median levels. Housing starts actually showed 5.7% growth YOY. Permits declined 12.7% from a year ago, this was a slower decline and the smallest decline [...]
No one could have possibly been surprised by the Fed's lack of action on Wednesday. They had signaled to anyone who would listen that they would pause (skip, take a hiatus, halt, or whatever you want to call it) at this meeting. And no one should have been surprised that Jerome Powell offered some tough talk about the future of [...]
In order to get inflation to 2%, how much demand do you have to kill or how much does credit have to tighten to offset the new interest income in the economy and a 6.1% fiscal deficit per year for the next decade? Inflation will be higher for longer. The Fed by necessity will have a higher implicit if not [...]
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