90% of the drop in the labor force since the Great Recession is attributed to young prime-age workers going on Social Security disability. OMG!!! Can this be true? Would the new CBO lie? Hasn't the Congressional Budget Office always been touted as a "non-partisan" body of the U.S. Government, and can always be wholly trusted to provide our political leaders with unbiased facts, free and clear of any ideological spin?
Fourth quarter 2014 real GDP was revised 0.4 percentage points lower to 2.2%. That's quite disappointing, although still mediocre growth. The reason for the revision reduction was inventories did not grow nearly as much as originally estimated and imports increased. Real consumer spending was barely revised. Overall Q4 GDP cutting isn't that surprising, more Q3 GDP's lack of trade deficit impact was.
The first attack on Social Security this year was with the false accusation that there was rampant fraud in the disability program, when two different reports show only 0.4% fraud in the program — far less than any other government program — and probably far less than employee theft in the private sector — and much less that's found in the defense industry.
The Consumer Price Indexdropped -07% for January, the largest monthly drop since December 2008 and the steepest monthly decline in a series of seven. Gasoline prices plummeted -18.7%, the steepest since December 2008. The drop in gas overwhelmed the Consumer Price Index and was the cause of the overall drop.
With all the heated debates about our skyrocketing debt and ballooning deficit — not to mention, all the rampant fraud in our government social programs — how can the U.S. afford another war? Will we use PAYGO — and pay as we go into war?
Probably the most interesting economic report of those released last week was the January report on the Producer Price Index from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which showed the headline producer price index for final demand had fallen by a seasonally adjusted 0.8% for the month, after falling 0.2% in both November and December, and which left year over year wholesale inflation unchanged. Both the monthly decrease and the year over year change were the greatest drop that this new PPI index has ever shown in the two years
Last week members of the Alliance for Retired Americans (the Alliance) met with over 120 members of Congress and staffers in their home districts to take a stand on Social Security, Medicare and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
The January 2015 New Residential Single Family Home Sales decreased -0.2% to 481,000 in annualized sales. This change is maintaining six year highs and this month is well within the statistical error margin of ±22.2%. . For the year, new single family home sales are up 5.3% from the January 2014 457,000 sales levels.
In the month of September 1945, the U.S. had a loss of 1,967,000 jobs, because World War II had ended. In the month of September 1983, the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a gain of 1,115,000 jobs.
The December 2014 S&P Case Shiller home price index shows a seasonally adjusted 4.5% price increase from a year ago for the 20 metropolitan housing markets and a 4.3% yearly price increase in the top 10 housing markets. There are two ways to look at the never ending increasing home prices.
Is it passive aggression? Is it cruel antagonism? Is it overt animosity? Is it open hostility, bordering on outright hate? Or it's much less evil that; maybe it's just apathy, ignorance or indifference.
The bitter cold blew in more than snow for January. Existing home sales suffered as well with a -4.9% decline in sales for the month. This is the biggest monthly drop off in nine months with single family homes declining by -5.1% in sales. Sales by volume are now 4.82 million in January. April 2014 showed 4.75 million annualized sales.
Two more reports from last week that we want to look at were on December sales and inventories for different sectors of the economy. We want to know how they might affect 4th quarter GDP revisions. Here's a simplistic way to think about how sales and inventories in the economy affect GDP: If the economy consumes 10 apples at a dollar a piece in November, and 11 apples at 90 cents each in December, sales have gone down by 1% in December but monthly GDP is up 10%. If there are 10 apples left on the shelf in both months, reported inventories will go down 10% in December, but
The Federal Reserve Industrial Production & Capacity Utilization report shows industrial production gained 0.2% in January. There were also revisions back to August with all but one month revised downward. December was revised to a -0.3% decline and November's blow out was toned down to 1.1% growth increase. Manufacturing alone grew by 0.2% and utilities jumped up 2.3% in January on weather.
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