Even as Revenues Grow, Amazon to Lay off 14,000. Why? AI & Corporate Efficiency. Walmart and Others Toot Similar Horn

by Wolf Richter • Oct 28, 2025 • 52 Comments

Revenue growth without employment growth. But Amazon spent $78 billion on capex in 2024 and more in 2025. So companies that get this cash hire more people than Amazon sheds?

The Cities Where Condo Prices Are Now Below their Housing Bubble Peaks 20 Years Ago

by Wolf Richter • Oct 26, 2025 • 50 Comments

Boom-Bust, Boom-Bust?

Food Inflation: The Price Spikes of Beef, Coffee, Eggs, and Dairy

by Wolf Richter • Oct 24, 2025 • 119 Comments

CPI for food at home has surged by 30% since January 2020. Food prices are nothing to be trifled with.

Massive Outlier in Owner’s Equivalent of Rent Pushed Down CPI, Core CPI, Core Services CPI: Something Went Awry at the BLS

by Wolf Richter • Oct 24, 2025 • 82 Comments

OER weighs 26% of CPI, 33% of core CPI, 44% of core services CPI. It moves the needle. CPI inflation would have been a lot hotter without this outlier.

Oh Elon, Californians Already Forgot? EV Sales, even Teslas, Spike in Q3 before End of Federal EV Incentives. ICE Vehicle Sales Plunge

by Wolf Richter • Oct 23, 2025 • 59 Comments

Tesla Model Y by far #1 bestseller in California. Cybertruck failed, Model S and X fell off list. Non-Tesla EVs soar to record.

Sales of Existing Single-Family Homes Rise but still 23% below 2019, Supply at 2016 Levels. Condo Sales Near Low in the Data, Supply at Housing Bust Levels, Prices Down YoY

by Wolf Richter • Oct 23, 2025 • 56 Comments

September marks third year in a row of sales wobbling along crushed levels.

US Treasury Debt Hits $38 Trillion after Spiking by $1 Trillion in 2.5 Months and by $1.8 Trillion since the Debt Ceiling

by Wolf Richter • Oct 22, 2025 • 98 Comments

But debt and interest expense don’t exist in a vacuum.

Falling Mortgage Rates further Reduce Demand in the Housing Market (Not so Paradoxically)

by Wolf Richter • Oct 22, 2025 • 38 Comments

Waiting for even lower mortgage rates comes on top of all the big issues that crush demand in the housing market.

The 23 Bigger Cities where Condo Prices Dropped by 12% to 28% through September

by Wolf Richter • Oct 21, 2025 • 53 Comments

The Condo Bust is spreading, after the most extraordinary Condo Bubble maybe ever.

Repo Market Brushfires Doused by Banks’ Use of the Fed’s Standing Repo Facility (SRF)

by Wolf Richter • Oct 20, 2025 • 76 Comments

The new & improved SRF begins to serve its purpose of allowing the Fed to push QT as far as possible without blowing anything up, unlike last time.

The 15 Bigger Cities with the Biggest Price Declines of Single-Family Homes (-10% to -24%) through September

by Wolf Richter • Oct 19, 2025 • 42 Comments

Oakland, Austin, Cape Coral, New Orleans, San Francisco, Birmingham, Fort Myers, Washington DC, Sarasota, Denver, Hayward, Portland, Phoenix, Naples, St. Petersburg.

AI-Powered Tricolor and its Mushroom Cloud of Fraud Allegations Are a Sign Greedy Lenders Closed their Eyes for Years, Not a Sign Consumers Are “Cracking” or Whatever

by Wolf Richter • Oct 17, 2025 • 60 Comments

American consumers are doing OK on their auto loans.

The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America: Price Drops & Gains in 33 Large Expensive Metros in September 2025

by Wolf Richter • Oct 16, 2025 • 63 Comments

Prices fell YoY in 22: Tampa, Austin, Miami, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Phoenix, Orlando, Atlanta, Denver, Raleigh, Seattle… Rose in Chicago, Boston, New York, Philadelphia…

Stock Market Leverage Blows Out

by Wolf Richter • Oct 15, 2025 • 173 Comments

Everyone is talking about the AI bubble – proclaiming it or denying it – but this is what it looks like from the leverage point of view.

Home Buyers’ Strike Drags on Relentlessly, Despite Lower Mortgage Rates

by Wolf Richter • Oct 15, 2025 • 41 Comments

So mortgage rates are not the problem; they’re at the low end of the pre-QE historical range. Those exploded prices are.

Powell on the End of QT (“We’re Not so Far Away but There’s a Ways to Go”), Shifting Assets to T-Bills, and Selling MBS

by Wolf Richter • Oct 14, 2025 • 82 Comments

Bonus: His doomsday scenario if Congress forces the Fed to stop paying interest to banks on their reserve balances.

The Huge US Bond Market and the US Dollar Blow Off the “Debasement Trade”

by Wolf Richter • Oct 13, 2025 • 121 Comments

The bond market has taken the opposite bet, and the dollar has strengthened.

10-Year Treasury Yield Drops to One-Month Low on Trump’s China Threat, Bond Market Sees One Rate Cut this Year, Deficit-Funding Shifts to T-Bills

by Wolf Richter • Oct 11, 2025 • 53 Comments

Despite the big drop on Friday, the 10-year Treasury yield is higher than shortly before the September rate cut.

Is it Really Different this Time?

by Wolf Richter • Oct 10, 2025 • 190 Comments

AI is huge. But so is the mania of hype, hocus-pocus deals, and piles of real money fortified by leverage that caused stock prices to explode.

Amazing How the Money-Printing World Has Reversed

by Wolf Richter • Oct 9, 2025 • 77 Comments

Balance Sheet as % of GDP: Fed, ECB, BOJ, BOE, and Central Banks of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden