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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July 21, 2020 As we assess the many effects of the pandemic on our everyday life, we are also looking at long-term trends that may be with us for years. Many of these are well documented. For example, it is expected that a greater percentage of the population will work remotely in the future. This […]
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July 7, 2020 In a very strange year, the jobs report takes on more importance because we are in uncharted territory with regard to the economy. We moved from a slow-growth economy in the fourth quarter to a negative 5.0% in the first quarter of this year and what looks to be sharply worse when […]
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June 30, 2020 Most economies have reopened to some degree. And several states have seen a surge in infections at the same time. From this, we can conclude one thing — the virus is not taking the summer off as some had speculated might happen. On the other hand, can we say that the reopenings […]
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June 23, 2020 Last month’s jobs report was certainly a surprise and another example of predictions gone awry. The economy was supposed to lose millions of jobs and instead gained millions of jobs. That is quite a swing, especially considering the fact that we usually are dealing with employment swings in the thousands, instead of […]
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June 16, 2020 The government has injected trillions of stimulus dollars into the economy. This is causing the federal budget deficit to soar as we deal with the devastating effects of COVID-19 upon our economy. At the same time, the Federal Reserve Board moved short-term interest rates down near zero and purchased mortgage backed securities […]
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June 9, 2020 This was the title of one of our economic commentaries in January of this year. It is a message we deliver every year. Now that we have traveled almost one-half the way through the year, we thought we would like to bring this message back, because this year it applies more than […]
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