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A week ago today Southern California was hit with the largest earthquake since 1999.  Just a day earlier, the region shook as a magnitude 6.4 pre-shock rattled through before the main event which was 11 times stronger.  Meanwhile, my buddy John in New Orleans spent his Wednesday of this week moving sand in an attempt to minimize potential flood damage from Tropical Storm (and potentia

America’s economy added 224,000 net new jobs in June according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  This latest change to the employment situation was a dramatic uptick from the downwardly revised count of just 72,000 (originally 75,000) in May.  Although the unemployment rate ticked up marginally to 3.7 percent, this release was largely positive.

Disruptor is an aging buzz word in the American lexicon.  For years we’ve been hearing about disruptive technology (sometimes it only disrupts one’s inner tranquility when it doesn’t work).

Output growth in America during the first quarter of 2019 was downwardly revised by the Bureau of Economic Analysis in their second estimate of the period’s Gross Domestic Product.  After more data were collected, output is estimated to have grown 3.1 percent on an annualized basis, down from 3.2 percent in the first iteration.

Sales of new homes declined in April 2019 according to the Census Bureau.  Falling to an annualized 673,000 units from the upwardly revised count of 723,000 (originally 692,000), this monthly decline is the first of 2019.  April’s setback hurt the year-over-year trend which fell to 7.0 percent from 10.6 percent in March.

April 2019 Chicago Fed National Activity Index