October 6, 2020 No, the Labor Department is not giving up on reporting monthly statistics. But the report released on Friday was the last reading on the job market that we will see before the election. It is said that the voters vote with their pocketbooks each year. Of course, this year the economic numbers […]
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September 29, 2020 Certainly 2020 will be a year that many of us will not forget. Pandemics, hurricanes and wildfires have shown us how much our environment can affect our economy and our daily lives. We certainly have faced all of these in the past, but it seems that this year they have been more […]
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September 22, 2020 No, we are not talking about shortness of breath and swelling. We are talking about how the markets might react to the news that a vaccine (or a few) are available. We have already seen how medical announcements have set off positive reactions. Now that we are further along in the process […]
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September 8, 2020 Together with Moody’s Analytics, CNN recently came out with a new measure of the economy. It is called the “Back-to-Normal” Index. The index hit a low point of 59% of normal in mid-April, which was during the height of the economic shutdown. By mid-August we were at 78% of normal. By our […]
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September 1, 2020 The pandemic seems to be raging forward and we have seen a series of historically adverse economic reports. The consequence of these reports can be summed up in two numbers. First, we had the loss of over 20 million jobs in one month. Secondly, the economy contracted by over 30% in the […]
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August 25, 2020 There have been plenty of negative headlines this year — COVID-19, recession, civil unrest and more. The one constant positive throughout the majority of 2020 has been the lowest interest rates in history. These historic low rates continue to support the recovery from this COVID-induced recession. The beneficial effects of low rates […]
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August 18, 2020 Just recently, statistics have been released showing the lowest foreclosure rate in history for the first half of this year, according to ATTOM Data Solutions. How can that be true during a deep recession? These low foreclosure rates are actually a function of two different factors. For one, the rate of foreclosures […]
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August 11, 2020 Last week when the first measure of economic growth came out for the second quarter, we acknowledged that this was a picture of how bad things became during the depths of the shutdown. At the end of the last week we witnessed a reading which gives us information regarding how long these […]
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August 4, 2020 It is the general consensus that the bottom of the economy was the second quarter of this year. The contraction was expected to be severe as the economy virtually shut down during several weeks of this period. How severe? Just giving a perspective, the largest annual decline in economic growth (GDP) during […]
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July 28, 2020 We have just finished one of — if not the weakest — quarter in history. The corona virus is still raging. Millions have lost their jobs. Yet the stock market continues to rise, recovering from its lows hit early this year. Thus, the question is — why? There are many possible explanations […]
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