Archive for January 2020

The Friday File: The 18th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified on 1/17/1919 and went into effect a year later; 100 years ago today! Massachusetts was the first state to pass a temperance law in 1838, and in 1846 Maine was the first to prohibit alcohol sales. Prohibition turned crime into organized crime and created…

The US manufacturing sector is in its worst shape since the end of the Great Recession in 6/09 and is firmly shrinking; it’s the second time since the end of the Great Recession. Although this contraction is slightly worse than the last manufacturing recession of 15Q4, which was mild, like then the service sector is…

The CY2019 deficit is $1.02 trillion and Y-o-Y it grew 17.1%. While that’s down from a 28.2% rise in 2018, it’s no reason to celebrate. In 2018, tax cuts dramatically reduced revenues. In 2019, revenues rose 5%, but expenditures rose by a still larger 7.5%. The deficit is now an uncomfortable 4.7% of GDP, and…

New research has tentatively reconfirmed earlier findings that simply installing commercially available $700 air filters in classrooms that were void of any noxious fumes to begin with raised math scores by 0.20 standard deviations and English scores by 0.18 standard deviations! These are shocking, large, permanent improvements that are cheap, easily scalable and equal to…

December net job growth of 145,000 brings CY2019 employment gains to 2.1 million, down from almost 2.7 million in 2018. While job growth has slowed, average growth over the past decade has been 2.2 million/year, so it remains sufficiently solid to support continued strong household consumption growth. On the downside, wage growth decelerated slightly, but…

The Friday File: In 1851, scientists established body temperature at 98.6 degrees. After reexamining almost 700,000 temperature readings since 1840, researchers find body temperature has been steadily falling by 1/20 of a degree per birth decade. After accounting for measurement error and improved thermometry, the reason is reduced population-level inflammation; heat is a symptom of…

In 1981, the median age of the US homebuyer was 31. By 1989, it had drifted up to 34, and just after the relatively mild 1990 recession, it shot up to 42. By 1997, it bottomed at 35 and since then has almost steadily risen. By 2000 it was 39, by 2006 it was 41,…

The US goods and services trade deficit shrank to $43.1 billion in November, its lowest level since 10/16 when it was just $42 billion. And, our trade deficit with China over the last 12 months is $358 billion, down from $420 billion for the year ending 12/18. Separately, after hurting GDP growth through September of…

On 6/30/19 the US population was 328,239,523 and for the year ending 6/30/19 population growth was a dismal 1,552,022, or just 0.5%, continuing a decades-long decline. This growth rate was the lowest since the population fell in 1918 due to the Spanish Influenza pandemic; lower than what it was during the darkest days of the…

Boeing recently announced it was reducing to zero planes/month, from 42 planes/month, production of the 737 MAX which was already down from 52 planes/month following a second crash and the subsequent grounding of the plane in 4/19. Halting production will dramatically reduce industrial production, and if it lasts for all 20Q1, will reduce GDP by…