The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2024 is 1.8 percent on June 3, down from 2.7 percent on May 31. After recent releases from the US Census Bureau and the Institute for Supply Management, the nowcasts for annualized second-quarter real personal consumption expenditures growth and real private fixed investment growth declined from 2.6 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively, to 1.8 percent and 1.5 percent.
fff
Since I used The Animal’s version of the John Lee Hooker great tune “Boom Boom,” I will use another Animals tune for Joe Biden’s penchant for sniffing little girls. “Baby Let Me Take You Home.”
The Animals band. Not to be confused with the animals in the Biden Administration and Congress.
Job openings in April 2024 dipped to 8,059. Notice the trend (orange line) is below the trend set prior to Covid (red line).
Back in 2023, Socialist Paul Krugman declared that “the war on inflation is over!!! “We” won, at very little cost.” I love when elitists claim “We won!” since clearly 99% of Americans lost since food, housing and car prices up are double digits under Biden.
The problem is that food, energy, shelter, and used cars/trucks are a huge part of Americans consumption basket.
Under Biden, food CPI is up 23%. Home prices are up 34% and used cars/truck prices are up 17.7%.
A note to Paul Krugman, YOU may have won, but the rest of Americans lost. Consumer purchasing power of the US Dollar is DOWN 16.5% Under Biden.
After an unexpected jump in March, pending home sales were expected to drop 1.0% MoM in April as mortgage rates pushed back above 7.00% and stayed there.
Well, the analysts had the direction right but magnitude was way off as pending home sales plunged 7.7% MoM – the biggest drop since Feb 2021 (and below the lowest estimate), leaving sales down 0.7% YoY…
Source: Bloomberg
This is the 29th straight month of YoY declines for non-seasonally-adjusted pending home sales.
This MoM decline pushed the Pending Home Sales Index back to record lows…
Source: Bloomberg
The Midwest saw the biggest drop in pending sales, down 9.5% in April, followed by declines of 8.5% and 7.6% in the West and South, respectively. Contract signings in the Northeast fell 3.5%.
“The impact of escalating interest rates throughout April dampened home buying, even with more inventory in the market,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement.
“But the Federal Reserve’s anticipated rate cut later this year should lead to better conditions, with improved affordability and more supply.”
All driven by affordability crisis as mortgage rates surged back above 7.00%…
Source: Bloomberg
“The prospect of measurable home price declines appears minimal,” Yun said.
“The few markets experiencing price declines will be viewed as second-chance opportunities for buyers to enter the market if those regions continue to add jobs.”
As a reminder, the pending-sales report tends to be a leading indicator of sales of previously owned homes, because houses typically go under contract a month or two before they’re sold.
This pushed the price up 7.38% YoY – the fastest rise since October 2022…
“We’ve witnessed records repeatedly break in both stock and housing markets over the past year. Our National Index has reached new highs in six of the last 12 months.” says Brian D. Luke, Head of Commodities, Real & Digital Assets at S&P Dow Jones Indices.
Overall, US home prices reached a new record high in March (as median new home prices began to fall)…
Source: Bloomberg
San Diego continued to report the highest year-over-year gain among the 20 cities this month with an 11.1% increase in March, followed by New York and Cleveland, with increases of 9.2% and 8.8%, respectively.
Portland, which still holds the lowest rank after reporting three consecutive months of the smallest year-over-year growth, posted the same 2.2% annual increase in March as the previous month.
Luke suggested this implies “a strong demand for urban markets.”
No city has seen a MoM decline in price in 2024.
Home prices continue to track Fed Reserves closely, but a turning point may come soon…
Source: Bloomberg
Given the smoothing and heavy lag in the Case-Shiller data, it’s hard to find a causal relationship between prices and mortgage rates…
Source: Bloomberg
…but with rates remaining above 7%, it seems hard to believe prices can continue their advance.
Who the heck is HUD Secretary? It was Cleveland’s Marcia Fudge (a typical Biden political appointment). Now it is Adrianne Todman, from the US Virgin Islands and former executive director of the District of Columbia Housing Authority. Not exactly a high-powered resume for a cabinet post, Joe!
I saw former President Obama criticizing former President Trump for not passing “transformative” changes. That is, Trump didn’t sign any Obama-like transformative changes (like Obamacare). Truimp did try to slow down the damage done by Obama and his transformative agenda (e.g., open borders, wealth redistritution, green energy) that Biden has attempted to continue.
As we approach the party conventions and Presidential election of 2024, we saw the Economic Surprise Index (ESI) in May decline to -0.126.
Coupled with Biden’s negative buying conditions for housing (higher mortgage rates and soaring house prices), Obama’s Jacobian transformative economic fantasty is on thin ice.
Speaking of higher interest rates, US debt servicing costs currently make up 12% of government spending. Jacobin revolution = Cloward-Piven.
Let’s hope the Obama/Biden Jacobin revolution doesn’t get to this point!
The various talking heads from The Federal Reserve keep jawboning about whether to raise rates or not. One of the major drivers of inflation is … money. M2 Money growth YoY is growing again (blue line)! And with it, inflation has been rekindled.
Mortgage rates? There is a lag between M2 Money printing and conforming mortgage rate growth.
The US middle class and low-wage workers are back on the chain gang while the top 1% party hearty.
The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the U.S. decreased by 0.6 percent in April 2024 to 101.8 (2016=100), after decreasing by 0.3 percent in March. Over the six-month period between October 2023 and April 2024, the LEI contracted by 1.9 percent—a smaller decrease than its 3.5 percent decline over the previous six months.
It is surprising that Americans trusts the millionaires in the Administration (like Biden) or Congress (like Schumer, McConnell, etc) to have our backs on the roaring inflation rate. At least Speaker Mike Johnson isn’t a millionaire … yet. But that might explain his selling out conservatives.
Bloomberg reports that PBoC Deputy Governor Tao Ling announced the new 300 billion yuan ($41.5 billion) nationwide program of cheap funding to allow state-owned companies to purchase unsold homes.
Ling said the funding will be directed at 21 providers, including policy banks, state-owned commercial lenders, and joint-stock banks. A rate of 1.75% will be offered. The low-cost loans have a one-year term and can be rolled over four times.
The new program powerfully signals that policymakers are pushing for property policy easing and measures to balance the supply-heavy housing market, which casts a dark cloud over the world’s second-largest economy. This announcement appears to be a step in the right direction in a national-level policy.
Also, on Friday, policymakers eased mortgage rules and removed the mortgage rate floors for first and second homes. PBoC also lowered the minimum downpayment ratio for first-time homebuyers to 15%. The downpayment ratio for second-home purchases was lowered to 25%.
Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng said that authorities in cities with excess home inventories should purchase unsold properties and convert them into affordable housing. He also urged local governments to repurpose inactive land parcels held by property developers to alleviate their financial troubles.
This was a very policy-heavy week to save the debt-stricken real estate market. Data showed that property investment and new home sales in April experienced larger contractions, while housing prices slid even further.
China’s ailing property sector is a drag on GDP.
Housing sales are tumbling.
And apartment and commercial property sales are sliding.
In markets, the CSI 300 Real Estate Index closed up 9%, with gains from April 24 totaling about 36%. Yet the latest gains in the property index are still 68% below the early 2018 peak.
The index’s weekly gain was the most since early December 2015.
It isn’t in a Communist countries’ DNA to let markets solve the problem … like letting prices correct no matter how painful that adjustment is. Biden and his “economic” advisor Jared Bernstein (not an economist but a public policy hack) would likely follow China’s idiotic solutions to the problem.
I debated Bernstein once at a Washington DC conference. He was arrogant but eventually confessed that he didn’t know anything about housing or mortgages. Nice economic advisor, Joe!
April Producer Prices rose 0.5% MoM (vs +0.3% exp), with March’s +0.2% MoM revised down to -0.1% MoM. The downward revision did not stop the YoY read rising to 2.2% (from +2.1% in March)…
Source: Bloomberg
This is the highest YoY read since April 2023 and is the fourth hotter than expected headline PPI print…
Source: Bloomberg
Producer Prices have been aggressively downwardly revised for 4 of the last 7 months…
Source: Bloomberg
Services costs soared, dominating April’s PPI gains with Energy the second most important factor. Food prices actually declined on a MoM basis.
Source: Bloomberg
On a YoY basis, headline PPI’s rise was dominated by Services (rising at their hottest since July 2023). For the first time since Feb 2023, none of the underlying factors were negative on a YoY basis…
Source: Bloomberg
After last month’s farcical ‘seasonally adjusted’ gasoline price, April saw the PPI Gasoline index rise (with actual prices at the pump) but still has a long way to go…
Source: Bloomberg
Core PPI was worse – rising 0.5% MoM (more than double the +0.2% MoM expected) – which pushed the Core PPI YoY up to +2.4%…
Source: Bloomberg
And finally US PPI Final Demand Less Foods Energy and Trade Services rose by 0.4% MoM and 3.1% YoY (the highest in 12 months).
Worse still the pipeline for primary PPI is not good as intermediate demand is starting to accelerate…
Source: Bloomberg
Over the past month, ‘higher prices’ have dominated ‘lower prices’ in recent survey data…
Higher producer prices:
New York Empire manufacturing price paid advanced to 33.7 from 28.7.
Philadelphia Fed manufacturing reported prices paid gained to 23.0 from 3.7 in March.
Philadelphia Fed non-manufacturing prices paid rose to 31.0 from 26.6 in the prior month.
Richmond Fed services prices paid rose to 6.11 from 5.43 in March.
Kansas City Fed manufacturing prices paid advanced to 18 from 17.
Kansas City Fed services input price growth continued to outpace selling prices.
S&P Global manufacturing input cost inflation quickened to hint at sustained near-term upward pressure on selling prices.
ISM Manufacturing prices paid gained to 60.9, the highest since June 2022, from 55.8 in March.
ISM Services prices paid notched up to 59.2, the highest since January, from 53.4 in March.
Lower producer prices:
New York Fed Services prices paid fell to 53.4 from 55.1 in March.
Richmond Fed manufacturing growth rates of prices paid dipped to 2.79 from 3.22 in March
Dallas Fed Manufacturing outlook reported prices paid for raw materials dropped to 11.2 from 21.1 in the prior month.
Dallas service sector input prices index nudged down to 28.8 from 30.4 in the prior month.
S&P Global Service saw input costs slowed from six-month highs in March.
Do you see the ‘flation’ now, Jay?
So, no, The Fed does not have inflation under control.
Confounded Interest - Anthony B. Sanders 
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