Historically the best leading indicator for the economy (and employment) has been housing. I’ve been writing about this for years.
Posts Tagged professor
“We start 2010 with some early signs of stabilization in the housing market, with house prices and home sales likely nearing the bottom sometime in 2010. We expect that low mortgage rates, relatively high affordability and the homebuyer tax credit will help continue to fuel the recovery.
The UCLA Anderson Forecast, Ceridian Corporation and Charles River Associates have introduced a new index using real-time diesel fuel consumption data: Pulse of Commerce Index TM Press Release : New Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index(TM) Reveals Need for Economic Reality Check as January Number Declines Results from a major new econometric report – the Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index™ by UCLA Anderson School of Management – show the U.S. economy fell in January after a significant increase in December, with the index falling at an annualized rate of 36.8 percent. The more reliable three-month moving average for January managed to show a 3.3 percent gain at an annualized rate following the exceptional annualized rate of 14.6 percent in the previous month.
Note: The Census Bureau will release the Trade Balance report tomorrow as scheduled, but Retail Sales (January) and the Manufacturing and Trade Inventories and Sales (December) will be delayed until Friday due to inclement weather. On Greece from the Financial Times: Berlin looks to build Greek ‘firewall’ “We’re thinking about what we should do if the crisis spills from Greece into other euro countries.
Reuters is quoting President Obama: “One of the challenges that we’ve got to address internationally is currency rates and how they match up to make sure that our goods are not artificially inflated in price and their goods are artificially deflated in price. That puts us at a huge competitive disadvantage.” Pimco’s Paul McCulley listed this as one of the key issues for 2010: The first issue is the peg between the Chinese yuan and the U.S. dollar, which essentially gives us a one-size-fits-all monetary policy in a very differentiated world.
As a followup to my previous post, Professor Krugman points out that Q1 2002 GDP growth 1 was originally reported as 5.8% with rising unemployment. Good point.
From Bloomberg: Krugman Sees 30-40% Chance of U.S. Recession in 2010 (ht many thanks!) “[A recession] is not a low probability event, 30 to 40 percent chance,” [Paul] Krugman said today in an interview in Atlanta, where he was attending an economics conference. “The chance that we will have growth slowing enough that unemployment ticks up again I would say is better than even.” On the recession probabilities, I think Professor Krugman is warning policy makers about complacency, similar to his Monday column: That 1937 Feeling .
From PIMCO’s Paul McCulley: PIMCO’s Cyclical 2010 Outlook The first issue is the peg between the Chinese yuan and the U.S.
Krugman: CRISES
Jan 3
Here is Professor Krugman’s presentation to the Allied Social Science Associations this coming Monday: CRISES Krugman discusses several currency crises and compares them to the current U.S. deleveraging cycle. Here is an excerpt (picking up near the conclusion): Plunging prices of houses and CDOs …
