The China Syndrome
August 20, 2019 We will file this commentary under the subject heading of — you can’t predict the future, especially in a world economy. First we had a solid but unspectacular report of economic growth for the second quarter. Then we had a solid but unspectacular jobs report. In between, the Federal Reserve Board’s Open […]
Read MoreHere Comes The Fed and Jobs
July 30, 2019 What is happening with the job market? That is a question we have not had to answer for several years because job growth has been consistently positive. And though the job market continues to be strong in 2019, we can no longer use the word consistent from month-to-month. Since January we have […]
Read MoreEchoes of the Shutdown
February 12, 2019 Analysts are still assessing the economic reverberations of the government shutdown. The Congressional Budget Office released the official tally at a whopping eleven billion dollars, but we wonder what secondary and tertiary effects may have multiplied the costs. It is certainly hard to measure the psychological damage that was done. Even the […]
Read MoreNew Year Jobs Report
January 8, 2019 Actually, the data is from 2018, but it is the most significant data thus far released in 2019. On Friday, the jobs numbers showed the addition of 312,000 jobs last month, more than making up for a miss the previous month. In addition, the previous two months’ numbers were revised upward by […]
Read MoreInterest Rate Predictions
January 1, 2019 It is officially 2019! Every year high-paid economists come out with their predictions for a host of economic indicators, from economic growth to the pace of inflation. It is always interesting to look at these in hind sight, especially when forecasting the direction of interest rates. It seems that just about every […]
Read MoreFed Meets Today
September 25, 2018 Let us assume that the prognosticators are correct, and the Federal Reserve Board will hike short-term rates by one-quarter of one percent when they finish their two-day meeting tomorrow. What questions does that leave us with? For one, will the Fed’s announcement also give us a hint about whether there will be […]
Read MoreThe Missing Ingredient
August 21, 2018 The economy seems to be firing on all cylinders. We had a great preliminary estimate of economic growth for the second quarter, unemployment is near historic lows and consumer optimism continues to be very high. The strength of the economy has prompted the Federal Reserve to continue to raise rates from their […]
Read MoreInterest Rates in Perspective
July 17, 2018 Each time the Federal Reserve Board raises short-term interest rates, everyone seems to be expecting rates on home loans to follow suit. And sometimes this does happen, but often times it does not. Thus, we always find it helpful to remind our readers why the relationship is not a “one-to-one” phenomenon. For […]
Read MoreThe Fed Meets Today
June 12, 2018 This week the Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee meets with analysts expecting another hike in rates. While the overwhelming sentiment is for a hike, the enthusiasm for such a move is slightly lower than it was a few weeks ago. Since then there has been a flurry of international news causing […]
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