Category Archives: Consumers

Lower Payroll Employment Tomorrow?

Popular Economics Weekly Will tomorrow’s unemployment report be disappointing, and so cause the Fed to hesitate in raising their overnight interest rate above 0.25 percent, as they’ve been saying they will do this month? The most current economic indicators show … Continue reading

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Fed Rate Hike Could Hurt Employment

Financial FAQs Fed Chair Janet Yellen all but confirmed the Fed was ready to raise interest rates in December. She laid out a case for raising interest rates in a speech on Wednesday at the Economic Club in Washington. “Ongoing … Continue reading

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Oct. Pending and New-Home Sales Still Rising

The Mortgage Corner Both new and existing-home sales are still thriving, given that conforming fixed rates are still at almost historic lows, in spite of a looming Fed interest rate hike. Why? It’s mainly investors worried about worldwide growth that … Continue reading

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When Is Faster Growth Coming?

Popular Economics Weekly Where is the promised growth, with almost full employment? GDP growth was revised up from 1.5 to 2.1 percent Q2 to Q3, and is up 2.2 percent annually? When, if ever, will it return to the historical … Continue reading

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Are We Running Out of Homes?

The Mortgage Corner This isn’t a repeat of the housing bubble, as some pundits would have us believe. In fact, it’s the opposite. Too few homes are being built, and existing inventories of homes for sale have fallen to 2 … Continue reading

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Dr. Yellen—Don’t Raise Interest Rates Just Yet.

Popular Economics Weekly The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.2 percent in October on a seasonally adjusted basis, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased … Continue reading

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What Are Economic Lessons From ‘The Martian’?

Financial FAQs What can we learn from The Martian, a terrific novel and movie starring Matt Damon as an Astronaut in the not too distant future thought dead and left behind on Mars during a violent dust storm? It was … Continue reading

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An End to Austerity?

Financial FAQs On November 5, 2015, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the bipartisan Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act, a new multi-year transportation authorization bill, by a vote of 363-64. It will refund the Highway Trust Fund, among other … Continue reading

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Huge October Employment Report Will Boost Growth

Popular Economics Weekly The economy generated 271,000 new jobs last month, with all but 3,000 coming in the private sector, the government said Friday, topping expectations for 190,000 to 240,000 jobs predicted by various economists. Even bigger news is that … Continue reading

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How We Lost Our Middle Class

Financial FAQs We now have an even better reason to lament the decline of our middle class. New research by this year’s Nobel Prize winner in the Economic Sciences, Princeton Econ Prof Angus Deaton and his wife Anne Case, have … Continue reading

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