Wednesday September 25, 2013

Ray Dalio's 30 minute explanation of the economy.

It's a pretty tidy formulation and probably a decent way to think of economic growth and the cycles along the way.

[ via ]

Friday September 6, 2013

Part-time work accounts for the vast majority of this year's job growth.

So far this year there have been 848,000 new jobs. Of those, 813,000 are part time jobs... To put it differently, an incredible 96% of the jobs added this year were part-time jobs.

Update: This seems like a funny way to calculate things. If we're going to use the CPS data, why not use the reported full-time and part-time employment measures directly. By that accounting the fraction of jobs created this year that are part-time is 59%. Still high, but not quite as stunning.

Update 2: Here's the problem with John's calculation: Part-Time for Economic Reasons (LNS12032194) + Usually Work Part Time Noneconomic Reasons (LNS12005977) does not equal Total Part Time Workers (LNS12600000). To his credit, that's a little surprising to me too.

[ via ]

Thursday September 5, 2013

Mortgage market weirdness: Jumbo mortgage rates are lower than conventional mortgage rates.

A few folks have weighed in with explanations, but I'm not sure we have the whole story yet.