The number of U.S. commercial foreclosures spiked to 635 in January 2024 from a low of 141 in May 2020 reports real estate data firm ATTOM. The January count was up 17% from the previous month and roughly twice as many as in January 2023.
The Federal Reserve Board is responsible for formulating macro stabilization policy. More specifically, the Federal Reserve Board seeks tradeoffs between inflation and unemployment rates. Fed officials need meaningful data to formulate useful policies. Data on the unemployment rate that coincides with zero inflation provides a starting point for policy formulation. Fed officials also need data on the rate at which inflation reduces unemployment rates.
Market participants started the year with aggressive expectations of rapid and large rate cuts. However, after the latest inflation, growth, and job figures, the probability of a rate cut in March has fallen from 39 to 24%. Unfortunately for many, headline figures will support a hawkish Federal Reserve, and the latest comments from Jerome Powell suggest rate cuts may not come as fast as bond investors would like.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn may be the 1970 Nobel Prize winner for literature, but that does not make his work The Gulag Archipelago enjoyable reading. The detailed description of the methods of torture employed within the Soviet system alone will turn many readers away.
As Austrian Business Cycle Theory explains, big-ticket capital expenditures are heaving influenced by interest rates, as we discussed here.
Among the most persistent of myths in the sphere of economics is of the supposed benefits of government spending in the economy. Apologists will include government spending in gross domestic product measures, as if government production is truly “productive.” A common argument in favor of government spending is national defense spending.
The generous and bloated American welfare state has become an enormous magnet to both legal and illegal immigrants in the United States. This $290 billion annual magnet subsidizes migration and ensures that the total number of migrants into the US is larger than would be the case without the subsidy. This is always the case with subsidies. We get more of what we subsidize. It’s true for student loans and ethanol, and it’s true for migrants.
