Did anyone back when this whole thing started think that by the first week of the new year, 2021, jobless claims would still be significantly higher than every previous record worst level? We aren’t just revisiting the numbers, it’s completely rewriting the circumstances. The “V” hopes were dashed so long ago, and so thoroughly, the letter itself has completely dropped [...]
Macroeconomic slack is such an easy, intuitive concept that only Economists and central bankers (same thing) could possibly mess it up. But mess it up they have. Spending years talking about a labor shortage, and getting the financial media to report this as fact, those at the Federal Reserve, in particular, pointed to this as proof QE and ZIRP had [...]
If anything is going to be charged off, it might be student loans. All the rage nowadays, the government, approximately half of it, is busily working out how it “should” be done and by just how much. A matter of economic stimulus, loan cancellation proponents are correct that students have burdened themselves with unprofitable college “education” investments. Without any jobs, [...]
Bad news is good news? The payroll report for November 2020, like those of the previous four months, have only further corroborated and confirmed the untimely death of the recovery. Since actual recovery can take only a “V” shape, then the end of the “V” necessarily means the end of recovery.In the twisted world of mainstream assumptions, however, fret none. [...]
At some point, the thing actually has to happen. You can only keep talking about the thing for so long before people start to get wise. And most people, especially those in the public who understandably don’t following the thing closely, or the things related to it, are incredibly patient. Time and time again, they prove willing to give experts, [...]
COVID-19 is a 2020 story and not so much one for 2021. Pretty much everyone, however, will be seeking to make it that way. To begin this week a stark reminder of that promise: vaccine-phoria. While that unleashed a curiously narrow risk and reflation frenzy, the fact that it wasn’t more widespread speaks to this disparity.A vaccine doesn’t really change [...]
The primary reason for that first rate hike in a decade in December 2015 was ferbus figuring that full employment had probably been reached, certainly close to where the unemployment rate had fallen at that time. The Fed’s main econometric model calculated this key economic level at between 4.8% and 5.0% unemployment; the actual rate for that month hit five [...]
The payroll report for the month of October 2020 was a very good one. This shouldn’t be surprising, perfect BLS publications appear with regularity even during the most challenging of circumstances. Headlines and underneath, everything looked fine last month. It wasn’t perfect, however, and it’s the same things that leave it short of perfection which are entirely too familiar for [...]
The BLS’s payroll report draws most of the mainstream attention, with the exception of the unemployment rate (especially these days). The government designates the former as the Current Employment Statistics (CES) series, and it intends to measure factors like payrolls (obviously), wages, and earnings from the perspective of the employers, or establishments. The Establishment Survey.Its cousin is called the Household [...]
One step forward, two steps back. Implicit in the Fed’s big strategy reviewed unveiled by Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell at the end of August was an admission that policymakers had screwed up. No minor detail, either, they have messed up big time on the big stuff. Though failing to be explicit about it is so infuriatingly cowardly, it’s at [...]
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