Sales continue to fall for previously owned homes in the U.S., and September showed the sixth-straight monthly drop in sales, according to Bloomberg. Sales of these homes have fallen to the lowest level since 2015, and this consistent drop is the longest since 2014.Despite a lack of desire for purchasing older homes, U.S. housing starts also fell i...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. EconomyRecession and Employment It is a safe bet that at some point the U.S. will be contending with another recession—although there is a lot of disagreement as to when that might take place and how bad it will get. The arrival of even a mild recession will have an almost immediate impact on jobs as there will be compa...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. EconomySlumping Housing Market The slide continues as far as the housing sector is concerned. Both starts and permits are down—starts fell by over 5%. This is not taking anybody by surprise as most had expected to see this kind of decline some months ago. It seems to have taken a little longer than expected for the head...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. EconomyMore Job Openings than Applicants This is record territory as far as the job market is concerned. There are reported to be seven million job openings and roughly six million people looking for work. If every unemployed person was subsequently employed, the business community would still be short by a million. Giv...

U.S. housing starts did not turn out as expected in September, according to the latest release from the Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development. Privately-owned housing starts staggered slightly from August to a seasonally adjusted rate of 1.201 million in September. Economists surveyed by Reuters expected starts to decline, h...

Velocity of Money and the Connection to the Economy There is a fundamental premise in economics that the faster money changes hands, the better the growth of the economy should be. In our view, when you look at the velocity of M2, you get a fair representation of what is happening to the velocity of economic activity. A debate is raging among econo...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. EconomyFed Reiterates Intent It is not at all clear what the motivation is behind the latest tweet storm aimed at the Federal Reserve, but if it was expected to evoke a change in the policy of the Fed, it has not had the desired effect. The Fed has essentially circled the wagons and reiterated what it has been saying al...

After filing for bankruptcy in June, Toys 'R' Us announced its doors may be reopening—still without promise to pay its former employees and the small promise of paying a mere 22 cents on the dollar it owed creditors after the company filed for bankruptcy. Lenders plan to sell the intellectual property of Toys 'R' Us instead of continuing with a ban...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. EconomyWhere Is the Consumer Inflation? The latest edition of the Consumer Price Index came in lower than had been expected with a very meager 0.1% rise. It is not that the analysts thought there would be some huge jump in prices, but there has been more than enough evidence to suggest consumers would be feeling the inf...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. EconomyReactions to Global Tension The global markets have been roiled quite a bit in the last few days. This is likely to become a pattern in the weeks and months ahead. The sense is that markets are now expecting something bad to develop as a result of political tensions. Almost anything will do as a spark to evoke pa...

Construction spending in the nonresidential sector is taking a hit, according to a leading economic indicator. The Dodge Momentum Index, which has been shown to lead nonresidential building construction spending by one year, is in a bit of a slump following September's 2.6% downturn from August. The index also declined in August after a string of s...

 The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are gathering this week to discuss the state of the global financial system, which has many worried because of emerging markets and heightened trade tensions. The meetings are held in Bali and include a review of current risks to the world's financial well-being.On Oct. 10, Reuters repo...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. EconomyAvoiding Tariffs 101 It turns out that setting tariffs on imported goods can be a very tricky proposition. The way to do this is to impose these taxes on select goods as defined in the HTS [Harmonized Tariff Schedule] code. This system has 18,927 different entries that attempt to catalog and define every single t...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. EconomyConcern Grows as Regards Inflation The rate of unemployment is as low as it has been since 1969. That has the bond markets worried that at some point the inflation issue is going to become real. The threat has yet to manifest as expected, but that certainly doesn't mean it will not in the months ahead. The sense ...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. EconomyCan You Say Tight Labor Market? The unemployment rate has fallen to the lowest point since the days of the Vietnam War. Back in 1969, the rate was very low in part due to all the men who had been drafted into the military, but that is not a factor this time. Even though the number of new hires was down a bit from...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. EconomyJobless Claims Fall Whenever there is a major natural disaster, the expectation is there will be a series of economic ripples. The first of these will be a surge in the number of people claiming unemployment since many will lose their jobs—either temporarily or permanently. The arrival of Hurricane Florence was s...

September was good to the U.S. service sector, where activity reached a two-decade high as the economy begins the fourth quarter. The Institute for Supply Management's (ISM) non-manufacturing activity index indicated more hiring was behind last month's results that were last seen in August 1997.Following Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's rem...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. EconomyISM Reports Record Numbers for Service Sector The latest numbers for the manufacturing side have been down a little, but they are up quite dramatically in the service sector with a reading of 61.6. That is higher than the index has been since 2008, but it is not likely this will be repeated in the next month's da...

Trade credit insurance payout is at an all-time high. According to the Association of British Insurers (ABI), the second quarter payout of one million pounds daily ($1.3 million) to help cover bad debts is a quarterly record. A total of 92 million pounds was paid to U.K. firms to combat bad debt, also a quarterly record, surpassing the previous mar...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. EconomyNext Up?—China Now that the U.S. has moved to a new version of NAFTA, the attention of the trade deal has shifted to China. It is expected the same techniques will be applied—a mixture of dire threat and a way to salvage the relationship. The U.S. has started to run out of ways to punish China as there have been ...