Category Archives: Politics

Ignore the Bad News-Goldilocks Is Back!

Financial FAQs Why has the Fed stopped raising their interest rates? Because this is the lowest inflation rate for ‘core’ consumption expenditures in three decades, as this FRED graph from 1980 onward portrays. fred stlouisfed.org. “We are almost 10 years … Continue reading →

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Who’s Most Damaged by Trade Wars??

Popular Economics Weekly Why cannot the Trump administration make $1 + $1 = $2? It’s obvious to all major economists and anyone with basic arithmetic skills that foreign tariffs not only raise the prices of those imports to US, which … Continue reading →

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Why Do We Depend on the Fed??

Financial FAQs The March FOMC meeting ended today, the Fed left rates unchanged, and financial markets are spinning their wheels attempting to guess what happens next—e.g., how many rates hikes this year? The Fed’s decision to pause their rate hikes … Continue reading →

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Even More Job Openings!

Financial FAQs Calculated Risk The consensus from the Labor Department’s latest JOLTS report is job openings (graph yellow line) keep rising and employers are scrambling to fill them. January’s number of job openings rose 1.4 percent to 7.581 million that … Continue reading →

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Why No Inflation??

Financial FAQs Econoday There is almost no inflation, and the markets love it, as both stocks and bonds are rallying on news. The Consumer Price Index rose just 1.5 percent in February, and its core without more volatile food and … Continue reading →

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Why Smallest Jobs Increase in 17 months?

Popular Economics Weekly MarketWatch.com Is US economy running out of available workers? Just 20,000 nonfarm payroll jobs were created in February, per the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the lowest total in 17 months. But it may have been … Continue reading →

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Why the Record 2018 Trade Deficit?

Financial FAQs BEA.gov The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today that the goods and services deficit was $59.8 billion in December, up $9.5 billion from $50.3 billion in November, revised. This was not good … Continue reading →

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Can US Service Sector Boom Reduce Our Deficits?

Popular Economics Weekly Econoday.com All 18 non-manufacturing industries reported growth in February, according to the ISM’s non-manufacturing index, which gives a monthly overview of service sector activity. This is huge and says the service sector that makes up two-thirds of … Continue reading →

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Why the Record Low Interest Rates?

The Mortgage Corner fred.stlouisfed.org The 30-year fixed rate conforming mortgage rate fell to a 1-year low, according to Freddie Mac, the GSE still in government conservatorship, and major purchaser of conforming conventional mortgages. The 30-year fixed-rate averaged 4.35 percent in … Continue reading →

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What If No Brexit Deal?

Popular Economics Weekly Equalitytrust.org We know why the UK voted to exit the EU—UK working class anger at not gaining many of the benefits from joining the EU, while experiencing its downside with the influx of eastern EU citizens that … Continue reading →

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