Category Archives: Consumers

Big Surge In Vehicle Sales, Service Sector, ADP Employment

Popular Economics Weekly Why start with motor vehicle sales? “Consumers weren’t holding back in May when it came to buying cars and trucks which sold at a 17.8 million annual rate for a whopping 7.9 percent gain from April,” said … Continue reading →

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Pending Home Sales In Record Territory

The Mortgage Corner Pending home sales hit a 9-year high in April, according to data released last Friday by the National Association of Realtors. This is an early sign that housing construction and sales will come out of their winter … Continue reading →

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New-Home Sales, Case Shiller Index On the Rise

The Mortgage Corner–II As if to confirm U.S. housing starts and building permits’ jump to their highest levels in nearly 7-1/2 years, the sales rate of new single-family houses in April 2015 rose even higher at a seasonally adjusted annual … Continue reading →

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Higher Minimum Wage Strengthens Labor Unions

Popular Economics Weekly Unions may have been weakened by Republican efforts to abolish labor’s collective bargaining power, (in order to weaken their support of Democratic Party policies), but that may be changing as unions have found a new cause—working to … Continue reading →

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Dr. Robert Shiller–Why the Weak Recovery?

Popular Economics Weekly Nobelist Robert Shiller, winner of the Nobel for his research in Behavioral Economics, or the psychology that drives economic behavior, has come up with the latest reason this economic recovery has been so weak to date. GDP … Continue reading →

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Fannie and Freddie Didn’t Do It!

Financial FAQs As if further confirmation was needed that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not even a minor cause of the housing bubble and consequent bust, the latest judgment against Nomura Securities for selling fraudulent mortgages to Fannie and … Continue reading →

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2015 Housing Construction Will Surge

The Mortgage Corner We believe housing construction is about to bloom this spring, due to growing employment. For starters, an additional 45,000 construction jobs were added to nonfarm payrolls in April. This is even though construction spending to date has … Continue reading →

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Repubs Anti-Science Agenda Endangers US

Financial FAQs Last week, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, headed by Texas Republican Lamar Smith, approved a bill that would slash at least three hundred million dollars from NASA’s earth-science budget, says the New Yorker’s Elizabeth Colbert. “Earth … Continue reading →

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Baltimore and the Lessons of Inequality

Financial FAQs David Brook’s most recent New York Times Oped talks about the dissolution of social bonds in Baltimore neighborhoods. “Even in poorest Baltimore, there once were informal rules of behavior governing how cops interacted with citizens,” he says in … Continue reading →

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March New-Home Sales A Dud

“Sales of new single-family houses in March 2015 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 481,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 11.4 percent … Continue reading →

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