Suppose you lent someone $100 and when they paid you back they only handed you, say, $99 or $80. Would you consider the borrower to have kept his promise and contractual obligation? Or would you think that he had cheated you out of a part of the money you had lent him in good faith? […]
Sure, the sector suffered last year, but it’s overcome troubles before and will do so again. Real estate investment trusts, or REITs, were misunderstood for years after they debuted in 1960 – even for decades. When they were first written into law, they were little known and little appreciated. Institutional investors simply did not trust […]
Many parts of the economy have suffered no ill effects from Covid – the US government should restrain its largesses One year after the emergence of covid as a threat to our daily existence, a peculiar narrative has taken hold whereby the undoubted turmoil of the past 12 months is being treated as a general […]
Sales of new single-family homes rose sharply in March, increasing 20.7% to 1.021 million at a seasonally adjusted annual rate from a 846,000 pace in February. Sales are an astonishing 66.8% above the year ago level (see top of first chart). Sales were up in three of the four regions of the country in March […]
This article was originally published in June 2020. Market volatility is at an historic extreme. From a technical perspective, post-pandemic US stock markets are behaving in a manner unseen in price history, making multi-year lows and highs in a matter of weeks. Liquidity comes at a price. Read on to better understand why volatility is the price […]
Total housing starts rose to a 1.739 million annual rate from a 1.457 million pace in February, a 19.4% increase. The March recovery was expected as weather conditions in significant portions of the country were unfavourable in February and significantly depressed activity. From a year ago, total starts are up 37.0%. The dominant single-family segment […]
Some of you may remember Steven Bradbury, the Australian short-track speed skater, in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. The unlikely finalist – he’d snuck through the semi-final after the defending champion fell three bends from the end and two other rivals collided – found himself up against the best of the sport […]
The state of New York is an economic disaster area. New York is ranked #50 in the Economic Freedom of North America. New York is ranked #48 in the State Business Tax Climate Index. New York is ranked #50 in the Freedom in the 50 States. New York is next-to-last in measures of inbound migration. New York is ranked #50 in the State Soft Tyranny Index. The good news is […]
The late Everett Dirksen, a long-serving Minority Leader of the Republicans in the US Senate, is famously quoted as saying a billion here, a billion there, and soon we’re talking real money. That was back in 1969. At the time, a billion dollars was about one-tenth of 1% of GDP. What about today? During 2020, the […]
Despite the pandemic, restrictive government policies, and the worst economic contraction in history, US household net worth rose again in the fourth quarter to a new record. Household net worth rose to $130.155tn, up 5.6% from the previous record of $123.229tn in the third quarter, and 10.1% from $118.220tn at the end of 2019 (see […]
