Former business journalist and retired economist. Behavioral Finance maven.
Vienna, VA
Joined May 2017
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Robert Frick retweeted
Fox: 176,000 people have 2 full-time jobs. That's the second highest ever recorded. Does this mean many people are really struggling to get by?
Guest: The bottom 80% of incomes are really struggling. That's an 80-hour work week. They're only doing it because they have to
Anyone who's not a sycophant can deny it. It's an unmitigated disaster. He taxed billions of dollars, and Americans paid 95% of that tax. The leverage is the incentive of other countries to cut us out of world commerce. They prop up inflation.
No one can deny that the President’s use of tariffs has brought in billions of dollars and created immense leverage for America’s trade strategy and for securing strong, reciprocal America-first trade agreements with countries that had been taking advantage of American workers for decades. Congress and the Administration will determine the best path forward in the coming weeks.
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Robert Frick retweeted
No one can deny that the President’s use of tariffs has brought in billions of dollars and created immense leverage for America’s trade strategy and for securing strong, reciprocal America-first trade agreements with countries that had been taking advantage of American workers for decades. Congress and the Administration will determine the best path forward in the coming weeks.
Hold the phone. Does this mean I’m not getting my $2000 tariff check?
SCOTUS' decision striking down Trump's imposition of tariffs on pretty much every country in the world is both correct and welcome: the president has no independent power to impose tariffs, and Congress never delegated the overarching power Trump claimed.
finance.yahoo.com/news/supre…
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Robert Frick retweeted
The US has a housing supply shortage and things did not get better in 2025.
New housing starts: 1.36 million in 2025 = lowest since 2019.
New building permits for homes: 1.42 million in 2025 = lowest since 2019
Housing completions: 1.5 million in 2025, down from 1.6 million in 2024.
Nope. It's supply at the core. After the housing bubble burst, for a variety of reasons, building never recovered. Not enough houses to this day. Higher prices. We're +4 million houses in the hole still.
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What he said ...
The lazy journalistic habit of reporting each month's inflation news as an average of the past 12 months can be extremely misleading about recent trends.
"Overall inflation unexpectedly eased to 2.4 percent in January from the same time last year," says The New York Times. To say inflation "eased" misinforms the unwary that inflation has been trending lower. But all that 2.4% January-to-January change really shows is that (1) the rate of inflation was very high last January --5.2%-- and that (2) the rate of inflation was briefly very low last Spring --1.2% from March to May. There has been no "easing" of inflation over the past eight months, despite the single relatively tame figure last month.
Because a government shut down paralyzed the Bureau of Labor Statistics last October and November, nobody knows what inflation was in two of the last four months.
But nothing in the data that we do have for the past eight months suggests we have recently been experiencing an inflation trend nearly as low as 2.4%.
On the contrary, average CPI inflation from last June through January was 3.2%.
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Because wealthier people own homes, less well off have trouble paying card and car debt. K-shaped economy grows. #kshaped
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Let’s not celebrate the #Jobs report. First, numbers are always squishy and usually significantly revised. Second, less trustworthy now. Third, every trend shows a tepid market at best. People out of work longer, etc. Overall, jobs per population is down since COVID. Macro bad.
Robert Frick retweeted
This deserves more attention...
Last night the House passed the "Housing for the 21st Century Act" by a remarkable 390-9 vote.
If it becomes law, it would make it easier to build more housing in the United States (esp. smaller "starter homes"). @Neil_Irwin & @Courtenay_Brown have a good summary of the bipartisan bill here:
axios.com/2026/02/10/real-es…
Robert Frick retweeted
This chart explains how the economy can continue to grow, even as many Americans struggle to make ends meet: the richest fifth of Americans account for more than half of spending.
cc: @axios
Robert Frick retweeted
Q3 GDP of 4.3% was boosted over a percentage point by the weird trade situation. (See yellow boxes below). Artificially low imports and "high" exports did make GDP look better.
But keep in mind: Consumption was strong in Q3 at +3.5%. (see green box below)
Bottom line: This a ~2.5% to ~3% economy right now.
It's depends a lot on Americans keeping their jobs and layoffs not picking up.
Robert Frick retweeted
The "K-shape" economy is back.
To me, this is one of the most important charts to understand the 2025 economy...
The wealthy are still spending (though there has been some moderation).
Meanwhile the bottom 80% are tapped out. Their spending is basically in line w/inflation.
***Whether we go into a recession will depend almost entirely on whether the top 10 to 20% of earners keep spending***
#economy
Robert Frick retweeted
My plan to revive American manufacturing is to: raise the price of inputs like steel, aluminum & copper; create shortages of rare earths; invite retaliatory tariffs; cut R&D; raise borrowing costs by blowing out the budget; and to cover it all in a thick cloud of uncertainty.
How people with different political leanings think about the economy is fascinating. The flip when the White House changes just underscores how expectations are colored by our biases. Interesting Republicans are worrying about the future more 1)#consumersentiment
#2 On the other hand, Republicans think current conditions are getting better, despite increasing odds for recession and a return of inflation.
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#3 Overall, sentiment is dropping for Republicans but diving for Democrats and Independents. As far as inflation expectations - way up, but these are neither predictive of inflation nor materially affects consumer buying patterns.
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