On Monday of last week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration posted an article on their daily blog (Today in Energy) titled "United States remains largest producer of petroleum and natural gas hydrocarbons".. The article featured a graph of our production of gas and oil vis a vis that of Russia and Saudi Arabia and went on to tell the familiar story about how fracking made it possible for our output of gas and oil to pass that of Russia in 2012
The Second Estimate of our 1st Quarter GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis indicated that our real output of goods and services grew at a 0.8% rate in the 1st quarter, revised up from the 0.5% growth rate reported in the advance estimate last month, as residential investment was revised higher, growth in private inventory investment decreased less than was previously estimated, and exports were down less than had previously been reported.
The April 2016 New Residential Single Family Home Sales increased by an astounding 16.6% from March. The monthly gain is also unusually outside the ±15.4% margin of error. Monthly sales increased by 88,000 annualized units to 619,000 for the month. This is the highest monthly percentage gain in 24 years and new home sales are now at an eight year high. Sales were 545,000 a year ago.
I predicted that Donald Trump was going to win the GOP nomination before the Iowa caucus. I even predicted that he might run the table. While he didn’t run the table as I overly enthusiastically suggested at one point, he came closer to running the table than he did to imploding as all the smarts were predicting.
The Federal Reserve Industrial Production & Capacity Utilization report reversed itself from last month and had a 0.7% blowout. March though was revised downward to a -0.9% decline. Mining is still repressed but manufacturing showed signs of life for the month. Utilities increase due to the return to seasonal weather from last month.
The Consumer Price Index ballooned up by 0.4% for April as energy prices jumped up 3.4%. Gasoline alone really shot up, 8.1% for the month. Inflation with food and energy price changes removed increased 0.2% with shelter and medical costs once again increasing. From a year ago overall CPI has increased 1.1%.
This Wednesday's Petroleum Status reports for the week ending May 6th from the Energy Information Administration indicated that our crude oil production fell a bit once again and that our imports of oil were virtually unchanged, while US refineries saw another modest increase in the amount of oil that they used.
April 2016 retail sales really popped up as auto sales roared. Retail sales increased 1.3% for the month and auto dealers sales surged by 3.5%. Without autos & parts sales, retail sales still had a great showing with a monthly 0.8% gain. Gasoline station sales have also shot up as prices rose, a 2.2% increase for the month.
Many rightish critics of our current political state of affairs assert that modern mass democracy does not breed true statesmen, and some of these sincere rightish critics point to the success of Donald Trump as a case in point. (I say sincere rightish critics because globalist donor class shills masquerading as movement conservatives who are critical of Trump, such as Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, Bill Kristol, the boys at National Review, et al, are not sincere.) And these sincere critics are certainly right.
The April 2016 unemployment report shows some disturbing developments behind the numbers. While the official unemployment rate did not change and stayed at 5.0%, over half a million dropped out of the labor force during the month and over three hundred thousand are no longer employed. The labor participation rate dropped by 0.2 percentage points as did the civilian participation rate.
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