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Incomes and outlays improved to start the second quarter of this year according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  Personal income rose 0.3 percent in April 2018, and spending jumped 0.6 percent.  Disposable personal income (DPI), aka after-tax pay, rose 0.4 percent or $60.9 billion, leading to some decay in the nation’s savings rate. 

In The Stepford Wives, a novel with two film adaptations, men in a fictional Connecticut town have discovered how to turn their wives into submissive, overly attentive, eager to please robots.  Spoiler alert: things seem to go quite well for the men, not so much for the women who are transformed.  Given current (and presumably future) advances in robotics and artificial intelligence,

Existing homes sales were disappointing to start the second quarter of 2018 after moving higher in both February and March.  Month-over-month, transaction volume fell 2.5 percent in April.  Even more disappointing is the year-over-year tally which also fell, dropping 1.4 percent and declining for a second consecutive period.

America’s economy keeps churning out jobs.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, firms added 223,000 net new jobs in May 2018, following April’s downwardly revised count of 159,000 (originally 164,000).  Additionally, the unemployment rate fell one-tenth of a percentage point to just 3.8 percent, matching the lowest level since 1969. 

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold – W. B. Yeats

Economic growth is poised to continue according to the Conference Board’s latest release on the Leading Economic Index (LEI).  Their 10-component indicator increased 0.4 percent in April 2018 to 109.4.  This healthy uptick is on the heels of two other strong increases in February and March of 0.7 percent and 0.4 percent respectively.