Jobs, Wages, Mass Immigration, Full- and Part-Time Workers, Unemployment, Prime-Age Participation Rate, and Multiple Jobholders (who are they anyway?) by Wolf Richter • May 3, 2024 • 71 Comments But the undercount of mass-immigration distorts the household data.
Fed Balance Sheet QT: -$1.60 Trillion from Peak, to $7.36 Trillion, Lowest since December 2020 by Wolf Richter • May 2, 2024 • 209 Comments Quantitative Tightening has removed 38% of Treasury securities and 27% of MBS that pandemic QE had added.
Delinquencies of Floating-Rate Office CMBS Loans Hit 20%, But Fixed-Rate Loans at 4.7% by Wolf Richter • May 2, 2024 • 20 Comments Revenge of the floating-rate CRE loans: Ironically, use of floating-rate office loans ballooned as interest rates rose.
Oh Deary, Where Did my Rate Cuts Go? Fed’s Wait-and-See Now Entrenched? And Suddenly Lots of Talk about “Rate Hikes” by Wolf Richter • May 1, 2024 • 166 Comments What Powell Said about rate hikes, no rate cuts, rate cuts, and the QT slowdown while getting rid of MBS entirely.
Fed Holds Rates at 5.50% Top of Range, QT Slowdown Starts in June, Acknowledged Inflation is a Problem Again by Wolf Richter • May 1, 2024 • 193 Comments New language: “In recent months, there has been a lack of further progress toward the Committee’s 2 percent inflation objective.”
The Most Splendid Housing Bubbles in America amid the Now-Fizzled Rate-Cut Mania & Erstwhile Plunge in Mortgage Rates by Wolf Richter • Apr 30, 2024 • 145 Comments Rate-Cut Mania died, mortgage rates re-jumped to 7.5% today, but here’s what home prices did during Rate-Cut Mania.
Sagging Used-Car Prices, Spiking Maintenance & Repair Costs, and a Post-Bankruptcy Propaganda Coup Turn Toxic for Hertz by Wolf Richter • Apr 29, 2024 • 146 Comments Americans need lower car prices. But not Hertz. “The residual decline … was relative to both ICE vehicles and EVs”: Hertz
Money Market Funds, T-Bills, Large CDs, Small CDs: Americans Learn to Arbitrage the Higher-for-Longer Interest Rates by Wolf Richter • Apr 27, 2024 • 137 Comments There’s no need to still pay a “loyalty tax” to the banks.
Fed’s Wait-and-See on Rate Cuts Further Supported by Extra-Hot “Core Services” PCE Inflation & Hot “Core” PCE Inflation by Wolf Richter • Apr 26, 2024 • 199 Comments Housing inflation refuses to cool for eighth month, and five of the remaining seven core services accelerated further. This is not good.
Our Drunken Sailors Splurge on Services, Fixed Investment Surges. But Much-Worse Imports Drag Bigly on GDP. And there’s a Blip in Government Spending by Wolf Richter • Apr 25, 2024 • 113 Comments Re-accelerating inflation in Q1 hit “real” GDP growth. “Current-dollar” GDP growth only a hair slower than in Q4.
