Short Items of Interest—U.S. Economy Recovery in Housing Starts For the last few months, there has been a steady drumbeat of concern as regards the state of the housing sector. It has been assumed that past patterns would start to manifest at some point—the headwinds that everybody seems to talk about. Higher home prices and higher mortgage rates w...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. Economy Changes in the Supply Chain on the Immediate Horizon There are several factors that are all conspiring to force significant change in the way that companies handle their supply chain. Some of these changes have been coming for some time, but the pace has been accelerating due to the fact that driver shortages an...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. Economy U.S. Growth Outpaces World Last year, the global economies were experiencing a rare period of unity. The U.S. was growing and so were Europe, Japan, China and pretty much everybody else. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) were both gushing o...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. Economy Will Higher Borrowing Costs Impact Consumer? At some point, they will have to. The rate on a mortgage loan is now as high as it has been since 2013—standing at 4.54 for a 30-year fixed. Credit card rates will move up by a point or two, and so will car loans and most everything else. It would be assumed this woul...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. Economy Producer Prices on the Rise Yesterday, the news from the consumer side of things indicated that there was reason for concern about the rise of inflation. Now, there is support for that notion from the producer price index as well. The rise was by 0.5% over levels seen in May, above the estimate of a 0.3% hike. O...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. Economy Inflation Starts to Show Its Ugly Face For the better part of the last two years there has been a steady drumbeat of concern among economists that inflationary pressure was about due, but it never seemed to quite manifest as expected. Most of the blame for this slow reaction has fallen on the job market as there...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. Economy Will Job Market Continue to Baffle the Fed? Right now, the tried and true strategies and tactics are not working as they are supposed to. Once upon a time, it was relatively easy to figure out the connection between the job market and the Fed. A very low unemployment rate would inevitably create wage inflation a...

Insights From the Non-Manufacturing ISM Report The Institute for Supply Management released its May non-manufacturing (services) Report on Business June 5, and it was a strong report. Diving into the report, here are the top takeaway themes. Composite NMI: 58.6 vs. 56.8 in April This made the 100th consecutive month that the NMI (non-manufacturing ...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. Economy Labor Shortages Starting to Pinch One of the sectors fighting the labor shortage situation the longest has been transportation. Today, there are many sectors chronically short of the workers needed—everything from construction to manufacturing to even health care, but it was the transportation sector that was in...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. Economy Beating Trade Restrictions It is a little misleading to refer to trade wars between nations. The fact is that countries do not buy or sell anything to another country. It is not like the U.S. government is purchasing from China to fill the shelves at Walmart. Trade takes place because companies in the U.S. want ...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. Economy Global Indices Fading At the start of the year, the most common question asked of any economist was "what will the year be like?" The general consensus was that everybody needed to enjoy the first six months of the year since the last six months may not be so great. This is starting to pan out—at least according...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. Economy Job Report Solid—As Expected The rate of unemployment has now fallen to an 18-year low, although there is still an issue with how much people are being paid. The rate of wage increase was slightly higher than last month at 2.7%, but that remains highly anemic given a jobless rate of 3.8%. The economy gained a so...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. EconomyHousing and Labor ShortagesThe U.S. has an acute shortage of workers in a wide variety of fields. This has been made abundantly clear over the last few years. There are many factors that play into this issue—lack of training opportunities, lack of knowledge regarding these opportunities, personal issues that prec...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. EconomyBusiness Investment ImprovesIt would not seem to be the case given the latest data on durable goods, but the pace of business investment has started to improve; however, not quite at the pace that had been anticipated when the tax cuts were implemented. The big fall noted in this month's durable goods data is con...

Tracking key performance indicators (KPI) can give credit managers an idea of how business is doing and provide guidelines for improvement. However, analyses are only as good as the tools used to complete them, and according to a new joint survey, using dated technology will hinder performance. Nearly 1,000 professionals across several industries p...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. EconomyCongress Gets Frustrated With Trump TacticsTraditionally, trade issues are the purview of Congress—at least there is an expectation that the legislators will weigh in. The president does not have the power to establish a trade deal without getting final approval of the plan from Congress. Likewise, the president ...

Access to financing hasn't been a problem for small businesses in the U.S., according to a Federal Reserve annual survey, which found 72% of respondents expecting revenue growth this year. Results of the online questionnaire were released on May 22 with responses from nearly 8,200 companies during the latter half of 2017. On Tuesday, Reuters report...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. EconomySlight Rise in Jobless ClaimsFor the second week in a row, the number of first-time jobless claims rose, but nobody is yet sounding the alarm as these numbers remain at historically low levels. The number this week was 234,000 and was not concentrated in any specific area. There was a slight rise in the number of...

U.S. economists tend to keep their ears to the ground when the Fed hints at foreseeable rate hikes, but the country's latest monetary tightening outlook is also catching the attention of Asia-Pacific banks that could face repercussions in foreign funding. On May 17, Fitch Ratings stated it anticipates the Fed fund rate to reach 3.25% by the end of ...

Short Items of Interest—U.S. EconomyNew Home Sales FallAs expected, the pace of new home sales fell off this month. Analysts expected this slide, many of whom were actually pleasantly surprised the decline was less than anticipated. The headwinds that everybody has been talking about all year are stiffening up and creating an increasingly hostile e...