Debt -- GDP -- Housing -- Investing -- Market -- June 21, 2023

Locator: 44992ECON.  

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Debt - GDP

A lot of story lines in the following.

Depending which set of glasses / lenses / filter one is using, determines the story lines:

• political filter
• GOP's
• dems'
• economic filter
• investing filter
• Krugman's filter -- best filter for looking at this data, seriously.
  
• personal bias filter
  
• the MSNBC filter
• the Fox News filter
• the oily-stained Bakken filter
  

UK:

• sets record.
• debt = 100.1% of GDP
• inflation, rose again, remains over 8%

US:

• recent:
• debt = 116.1% of GDP; most recent quarter;
• debt = 123.4% of GDP; 4Q22;
• debt = 123.6% of GDP; 3Q22
• inflation falling, and now trending toward 4%
• link here, June 1, 2023.
• link here, December, 2022;
• historical
• all-time high: 132.4% in March, 2021; President Donald Trump (yup) left office January, 2021
• record low, 31.8%, September, 1974: President Nixon resigns, August, 1974

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Housing

Yesterday's big story. 

Today: it continues.

Liz Sonders, link here.

Great, great news for apartment dwellers.

All of those units will require furniture and refrigerators, computers and monitors, furnaces, a/c units; mirrors, and monthly subscriptions to Disney+;
some (many, most) will have dishwashers, washers, dryers, and live-in boyfriends

Personal note: we live in a metropolitan area that is showing huge population growth;
housing is in great demand:

• we just signed a new 15-month lease (max duration we could get):
• no increase in any of the add-ons (garage, carport, storage); amenities
• base rate increased less than 3%; in dollars, we won't even notice increase in monthly rent
• monthly rent increase less than what I spend at Starbucks each month
• my hunch: property taxes will easily go up more than 3% on homes
  

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The Housing Numbers For Last Month

Reposting:

Locator: 44977ECON.   

Housing starts, month/month:

• May, 2023:
• forecast: a decrease, estimate -0.1%
• actual: an astounding +21.7%
• prior:
• revised down
• original was: +2.2% month over month
• revised: -2.9%

Housing permits, month/month:

• May, 2023
  
• forecast: 0.6%
• actual: a remarkable 5.2%
• prior: 
• no change
  
• original was: -1.4%
• revised: -1.5%
  

Link here.

Someone needs to "draw" simpler graphs. LOL.