Dale Franks
Economic Statistics for 16 May 13
Here are today’s statistics on the state of the economy:
The Consumer Price Index fell -0.4% in April, but rose 0.1% ex-food and -energy. On a year-over-year basis, the headline CPI is up 1.1% and the core is up 1.7%.
April housing starts fell -16.5% to a 0.853 million annual rate. Housing permits, conversely, jumped 14.3% to a 1.017 million annual rate.
Initial jobless claims rose 32,000 to 360,000, and the 4-week average rose 1,250 to 339,250. Continuing claims fell 4,000 to 3.009 million.
The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index slipped half a point to -30.2 in the latest week.
The Philadelphia Fed Survey slipped into negative territory in May, falling from 1.3 to -5.2.
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Dale Franks
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Economic Statistics for 15 May 13
Here are today’s statistics on the state of the economy:
The MBA reports that mortgage applications fell a sharp -7.3%. Purchases fell -4.0% while re-fis fell -8.0%.
The Producer Price Index fell -0.7% in April, but the core rate—less food and energy—rose 0.1%. On a year-over year basis, the PPI 0.1% while the care rate rose 1.7%.
The Empire State Manufacturing Survey fell more than 4 points to -1.43 in April.
The Treasury reports that the net outflow of capital from the US was $-13.5 billion in March. Foreign accounts bought a net $15.3 billion of US securities, while US accounts bought $28.8 billion of foreign securities.
The Fed reports that Industrial Production fell -0.5% in April, as capacity utilization in the nation’s factories fell to 77.8%.
The Housing Market Index rose 2 points to 44 in May.
E-Commerce sales rose 2.7% in the 1st Quarter of 2013, down from 4.4% in the 4th Quarter of 2012.
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Dale Franks
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Economic Statistics for 14 May 13
Here are today’s statistics on the state of the economy:
The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index rose 2.6 points to 92.1 in April.
April export prices fell -0.7% and import prices fell -0.5%. On a year-over-year basis, export prices fell 0.9% while import prices fell -2.6%.
ICSC Goldman reports weekly retail sales fell -2.0%, and are up only 1.2% from a year ago. Redbook’s year-over-year sales growth reading improved to 2.8%.
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Dale Franks
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Economic Statistics for 13 May 13
Here are today’s statistics on the state of the economy:
Retail sales rose 0.1% in April, but fell -0.1% ex-autos. But, ex-autos and gas, sales rose 0.6%.
Business inventories were unchanged in March, resulting in a 1.1% build in inventories for the quarter. Sales were up 0.6% for the quarter, the weakest of the recovery.
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Dale Franks
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Observations: The QandO Podcast for 12 May 13
This week, Michael and Dale discuss Benghazi, the IRs and loony David Kokesh.
The direct link to the podcast can be found here.
As a reminder, if you are an iTunes user, don’t forget to subscribe to the QandO podcast, Observations, through iTunes. For those of you who don’t have iTunes, you can subscribe at Podcast Alley. And, of course, for you newsreader subscriber types, our podcast RSS Feed is here.
More Quickscript Stuff
If you are interested in some more geeky constructed language/font stuff, I have a new article up at Medium on a revision I made to the Quickscript alphabet. Frankly, the Quickscript alphabet is a bit of a mess, despite Kingsley read working on it for years. In just a few short weeks, however, I have created a revision of it that is vastly superior to the alphabet that Kingsley Read made his life’s work.
Because I am a genius in things that don’t matter.
Anyway, read it if you like, and please don’t forget to hit the "recommend" button at the bottom.
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Dale Franks
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Economic Statistics for 9 May 13
Here are today’s statistics on the state of the economy:
Chain stores are reporting April sales that are at the high end of guidance, and with stronger year-on-year sales growth rates than in March.
The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index fell slightly to -29.5, but remains at the highest level since early 2008.
Wholesale inventories rose 0.4% in March, while a 1.6% plunge in sales drove the stock-to-sales ratio to a recovery high of 1.21.
Jobless claims fell 4,000 to 323,000, and the 4-week average fell 6,250 to 336,750. Continuing claims fell 27,000 to 3.005 million.
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Dale Franks
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Economic Statistics for 7 May 13
On another slow day for the economic calendar, this is what we got:
The MBA reports that mortgage applications surged last week, with purchases up 2.0% and re-fis up 8.0%.
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Dale Franks
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The danger of guns. Dangerous, dangerous guns. Assault guns, even.
So, the Bureau of Justice Statistics has released their new report (PDF) on crimey, violency things. The key takeaway on homicide, is that it’s declined sharply over the last 20 years.
There were 11,101 firearm homicides in 2011, down by 39% from a high of 18,253 in 1993.
This actually understates the drop, however, because if you jump back to 1991, the FBI reports that there were 24,703 homicides that year. So, while homicides have declined by 39% from 1992, they’ve declined by 55% from 1991.
It’s not just homicide. In general gun crime is just…less.
Nonfatal firearm-related violent victimizations against persons age 12 or older declined 70%, from 1.5 million in 1993 to 456,500 in 2004. The number then fluctuated between about 400,000 to 600,000 through 2011.
So, despite the fact that we have more guns in private hands than at any other time in living memory, we simply aren’t using them against each other anywhere near as much as we were just 20 years ago.
Maybe part of that is the profusion of concealed carry laws. Maybe part is because of things like 3 strikes laws, where we just lock people up for a really long time, and we have really a lot of people in prison. But what is clear is that violent gun crime has dropped precipitously since 1991.
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Dale Franks
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Economic Statistics for 6 May 13
Here are today’s statistics on the state of the economy, such as they are:
Redbook reports weekly retail sales rose a weak 2.3% year-over-year. ICSC-Goldman reports sales fell -1.0% from last week, and are up only 2.4% from Last year.
And that’s it for today. It’s actually gonna be a really light week for economic data.
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Dale Franks
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