Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist May 28th, 2023 The stock market finished Friday on a high note, with the S&P 500 index just north of 4,200 for the first time since August 2022 and up 17.6% versus the market bottom in October. Part […]
Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist May 22nd, 2023 If you’ve been to a high school or college commencement lately, then you know the drill: at some point at least one speaker will urge the graduates to be “agents of change,” suggesting they’d like […]
Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist May 15th, 2023 It’s hard to open up a newspaper these days and not see a scary story about the debt ceiling debate. The Biden Administration is saying that a “default” is approaching if an agreement isn’t reached […]
Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist May 8th, 2023 Yes, we have banking problems. No, this is not 2008. It’s much more like the 1970s Savings & Loan problems. In other words, we do not have credit problems today, we have duration (asset-liability) problems. […]
Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist May 1st, 2023 For nine of the last fifteen years, few people thought about the Fed. Sure, we discussed QT and QE, but the Federal Reserve held interest rates at zero year after year. In 2017 and 2018, […]
Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist April 24th, 2023 In spite of weakness in some economic data, problems in the banking sector, and much higher interest rates, real GDP in the first quarter will almost certainly show moderate growth. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 is […]
Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist April 17th, 2023 The US economy is being tugged in two different directions right now. On the positive side we have the lingering effects of the massive stimulus of 2020-21, the renormalization of the service sector after COVID […]
Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist April 10th, 2023 History is full of economic and societal collapses. The Incan and Roman societies disappeared, the Ottoman Empire fell apart, the United Kingdom saw the pound lose its reserve currency status. So, anyone who says the […]
Post from First Trust Economics Blog Brian S. Wesbury – Chief Economist Robert Stein, CFA – Deputy Chief Economist April 3rd, 2023 If you were bullish for 2023…congratulations! The S&P 500 rose 7.0% in the first quarter and, although we still have more data to analyze before we finalize our prediction, it looks like real GDP grew […]
The Federal Reserve raised short-term interest rates by another quarter point on Wednesday. That, by itself, was clear, with the Fed now targeting a range for short-term rates between 4.75% and 5.00%. The problem was that the Fed continues to ignore the most important issue in monetary policy. That most important issue is the money […]
