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Signs of consumer spending weakness, particularly on discretionary items, have been evident for the past two years, well before the Iran war. The reasons why are clear: essentially no growth in inflation-adjusted income since the…

I wrote earlier about diminishing demand for U.S. Treasurys among price-insensitive foreign central banks (link), and noted that one of the largest sources of demand for longer-dated Treasurys from 2022 onward has been hedge funds…

Enormous and growing global government debt and budget deficits are once again in focus amid sharply rising interest rates. In years and decades past, price-insensitive holders of U.S. Treasurys such as foreign central banks and…

Home Depot, the world’s largest home improvement retailer and fifth-largest U.S. retailer by sales, reported its 1Q26 results this morning. The U.S. housing market has been struggling for years largely owing to the lack of…

One of the telltale signs of an asset price bubble is high margin debt among institutional and retail investors. Check. FINRA reported that margin debt provided by broker-dealers hit $1.3 trillion for the first time…

I’ve written about the ongoing struggles of all manner of consumer-related companies aside from those that cater mainly or exclusively to the rich, and noted that one of the explanations is stagnant inflation-adjusted income (link)….

I wrote last week about consumer spending patterns and to a lesser extent about the U.S. Treasury’s increasingly heavy reliance on short-term bill issuance to fund its massive budget deficits. Now back to the banks,…

Greg Ip of The Wall Street Journal wrote a column last evening titled “AI Is Distorting Practically Everything About the Economy,” and indeed it is (link). He noted that consumer spending is growing at a…

The U.S. Treasury said this morning that it anticipates keeping nominal note and bond sale sizes unchanged for at least the next several quarters, meaning it’ll continue to issue the shortest-dated debt (bills) to fund…

I’m back from a brief hiatus. 1Q earnings season has been largely as expected with housing, consumer and packaging companies reporting weak sales while many industrial companies have reported a surge in orders for the…