Blog

Retail sales gained back all the prior period’s losses and then some in October 2019 according to the latest data from the Census Bureau.  This indicator rose $526.5 billion to start the final quarter after declining $525.2 billion in September.  Year-over-year, retail sales are up 3.1 percent.

Small business optimism remains high by historical standards according to the latest data from the National Federation of Independent Business.  Their small business index rose to 102.4, an uptick of 0.6 point.  This increase was fairly pervasive as eight of the ten components rose. 

The American Government’s fiscal year has begun, and the start is already deeper into the red than year ago.  During the first 31 days of fiscal 2020, our nation’s deficit reached $134.5 billion, rising 33.8 percent!  This quick dig deeper into the debt hole follows the nearly $1 trillion shortfall in 2019.

Prices continued rising in October 2019 according to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  The month-over-month tally accelerated to 0.4 percent after going unchanged in September.   However, this sudden uptick had only a marginal impact on the year-over-year statistic, rising to 1.8 percent from 1.7 percent.  Removing food and energy, leaving

There’s a disturbance in the force and technology is behind it.  For instance, do you remember how disturbing it was to rewind your VHS tape?  And even with DVDs, they had to be returned to your favorite rental location or stored with your home entertainment system.  Now we download and stream.

There wasn’t a lot to celebrate in the September 2019 Retail Sales release from the Census Bureau; however, Atlas will find a way to cheer it on later in this note.  But first we must deal with the negatives.  The headline is a good place to start as the overall statistic dropped 0.3 percent, giving back most of the prior period’s 0.4 percent gain.

American firms continued adding jobs in September 2019 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Their latest tally indicates 136,000 net new jobs were gained in the period.  However, this improvement is slower than the upwardly revised tally of 168,000 (originally 130,000) in August.  Despite the slowing rate of improvement, the unemployment rate fell to just 3.5 percent, th

Did you hear the good news?  The Los Angeles Lakers played a fantastic first half of their opening pre-season game!  Anthony Davis, their new power forward, scored 22 points, and future Hall of Famer Lebron James added 15 himself.  While this first half was an encouraging 24 minutes of basketball, it doesn’t count toward the season’s tally, so plans for a championship

Our economy is currently in the middle of its longest economic expansion ever.  Sometimes it’s tough to imagine the Great Recession ended over a decade ago or that the first recession of this century started over 18 years ago.  During both downturns, output was in steep decline and firms were hemorrhaging jobs by the hundreds of thousands each week (e.g., in March 2009, the net