If the Federal Reserve is waiting for the economy to slow down before it eases interest rates, there is no doubt that they are watching the monthly jobs report for a significant clue. Thus far this year, there has been no sign that the economy is producing less jobs each month. The pace of the […]
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It is no fun being a member of the Federal Reserve right now. The economy continues to grow in spite of higher interest rates and inflation has calmed down. But inflation is still being a bit stubborn and it is taking a longer time to reach the Fed’s stated goal of 2.0% inflation rate. Here […]
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There is so much anticipation with every meeting of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee, which meets around eight times per year. The analysts are over the top with predictions of actions and then they obsess on every word of their post meeting announcements. And a few weeks later, when the minutes of the meeting […]
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Believe it or not, today is the first “night” of spring, as the Spring Equinox happens late this evening. This means that we are almost through the first quarter of the year. Spring is especially important not only because of the nice weather and the flowers, but also because it is prime real estate season. […]
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February 13, 2024 We have seen so many words describing our economic climate during the past few years. Words/phrases such as soft-landing, stagflation, sticky inflation, recession, qualitative tightening and more. There are so many that it is hard to keep up with the nomenclature. This week, we would like to bring one more to the […]
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February 13, 2024 The Federal Reserve has been quite busy this decade. We started this decade with an economy-halting pandemic in March of 2020. The Fed reacted quickly, pushing short-term rates to zero, as well as adding significant qualitative stimulus in the form of purchasing treasuries and mortgages, further pushing down long-term interest rates as […]
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February 6, 2024 The triple whammy of economic data has been released during the past two weeks. The question is—how did we do overall? We have already reported that economic growth for the 4th quarter came in at an estimated 3.3%, which puts the annual rate at around 3.1% before 4th quarter revisions. Overall, a […]
Read More January 9, 2024 Want to know how strong the economy will be in 2024? Well, it is all about jobs. A healthy economy creates more jobs and the more jobs created, the healthier the economy becomes because those with jobs spend more every month. In 2023, the economy was predicted to evolve into a recession. […]
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December 26, 2023 And so ends another year. While challenging from a real estate perspective, the year has been quite extraordinary. Conventional wisdom would have put our economy into recession after the Federal Reserve proceeded to raise interest rates eleven times from March of 2022 to July of 2023. Yet the economy continued creating a […]
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