Archive for June 2020

During 4/20, US personal income rose 10.5%, its biggest jump ever. The rise was entirely due to the $1,200/$500 personal stimulus checks and the $600/week increase in unemployment insurance payments. Despite that, consumer spending still shrank by a record 13.6% in April due to fear and lockdowns. Thus, savings jumped to 33%, quadruple or quintuple…

First time claims for unemployment fell for the 10th straight week to a still painful 1.54 million/week vs. 220,000/week before the Coronavirus, but down from a high of 6.87 million the week ending 3/28/20. Moreover, continuing claims have been steady at 21 million for three straight weeks after rising for eight straight and peaking at…

The Friday File: Currently, 36% of persons put two spaces after a period and before the next sentence, 64% put one space. While this practice is hotly debated, there is absolutely no evidence either method offers any advantage. The debate exists because older people learned on typewriters with fixed-width fonts while younger individuals learn on…

The official May unemployment rate was 13.3%, down from 14.7% in April. However, classification errors systematically lowered unemployment rates in March through May. After accounting for these errors, which the Census Bureau fully disclosed, the true unemployment rate in April was 19.7%, in May it fell to 16.3%. The broadest measure of unemployment fell from…

Hotel occupancy is up for the seventh straight week, albeit from a staggeringly depressed level. For the week ending 5/30/20, US hotels enjoyed (if you can call it that) an occupancy rate of 36.6%, pushing weekly demand to about 11 million room nights. The average daily rate per occupied room was $82.94, down 33.3% Y-o-Y.…

With so much fiscal and monetary stimulus coming from DC, unfounded fears of the US dollar losing its position as the world’s reserve currency have cropped up. There is no real competitor. To use metaphors, Europe is a beautiful museum, Japan is an old age home, and China is moving quickly from being a jail…

May’s employment growth of 2.5 million jobs, pushing unemployment to 13.3% from 14.7%, was terrific and implies hiring activity bottomed in April – a month earlier than expected – and the rise in the employment-to-population ratio from 51.3% to 52.8% is proof! That said, there’s a ways to go; unemployment peaked at 10% in the…

The Friday File: The number of wisdom teeth removed in the US is 10,000,000/year! And with generally two teeth extracted at a time, that means 5,000,000 surgeries. At an average cost of $500/exodontia, that adds up to $5 billion/year. Separately, adults with at least one original tooth currently have a mean of 25.5 original teeth,…

Fannie and Freddie are trying to do three things simultaneously; raise and protect their capital, generate a good rate of return for future investors, and in the public policy sphere, boost affordable housing and protect taxpayers. The problem, they can only achieve two of these objectives concurrently. For example, raising capital to protect taxpayers reduces…

Earlier today, mortgage purchase applications came in higher for the seventh week in a row and are now up 18% Y-o-Y. May private payrolls fell by a terrible 2.76 million but well below the horrendous 9 million expected! Moreover, oil prices continue to steadily rise and the yield on the 10-year Treasury closed at 0.68%…