Since the election:
Hazards of Reasoning by Anecdotes: LA Fires Version
Mr. Bruce Hall speculates on the causes for the severity of the LA fires:
Inflation Expectations since the Election: Up
At 10am ET, 10 year Treasury yields were at 4.8%, up from 4.7% at Friday’s close (delta 8 bps). TIPS 10 year were at 2.35% up from 2.32% (delta 3 bps). Here’re some 5 year inflation expectations data over the last year.
Jeffrey Tucker in the Steps of Shadowstats
Remember Shadowstats? Well, there’s always a John Williams. Here’s Tucker in EpochTimes (reprinted in ZeroHedge):
Billion Dollar Disaster Cost to Year-to-Date (assuming nothing else happens in January)
From NOAA to 2024, and guesstimate for January 2025:
Pecuniary Benefits of Showing the Flag
Six Measures of NFP Change since 2023M12, Four Measures of Private NFP
What do different measures say about the trajectory (rather than level) of employment?
Guest Contribution: “Retrospective on the First Year of Trump’s Second Term”
Today, we present a guest post written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. An earlier version appeared at Project Syndicate.
Employment in December
Contrary to expectations, nonfarm payroll employment surprises +256K vs. +164K Bloomberg consensus. The standard deviation of changes is 85K, with mean +186 (over 2024), which means the surprise is about one standard deviation.