FEATURED POST
July 22, 2024
MainStreet Macro: The next Fed rate cut might disappoint. Here’s why.
The recent slowdown in inflation has left market watchers more confident that Federal Reserve policymakers will cut interest rates at least once this year. What’s harder to predict is how those rate cuts might affect the economy.
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May 20, 2024
Main Street Macro: Staycation, road trip, or none of the above?
Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of the summer vacation season in the United States, but with consumers looking downbeat recently, the question is whether they’ll be hitting the road in force like they did last year. How people spend their time off this year–be it binge-watching Netflix from the couch or flying to Hawaii–can tell us a lot about how the economy will perform in 2024.
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May 13, 2024
Main Street Macro: Are consumers still all right? An update
Last week, a measure of consumer sentiment showed that people are more downbeat about their current and future economic well-being than they were a month ago. With the stock market reaching new highs in May, gas prices falling, and unemployment below 4 percent for the longest time since the 1960s, this gloomy shift is puzzling.
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May 6, 2024
Main Street Macro: What the pay gap says about inflation
One of the puzzles of today’s economy is inflation: Why isn’t it falling as fast as economists or the Federal Reserve expected? Inflation has slowed a lot over the past year, but recently it has stubbornly defied expectations of further declines.
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April 29, 2024
Main Street Macro: Curious about the economy? So are these kids
In my experience, kids ask the best questions. So for this, the 150th issue of MainStreet Macro, I took advantage of ADP’s Take Your Kids to Work Day to invite three young friends to talk about the economy. Here’s what was on their minds.
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April 15, 2024
Main Street Macro: All that glitters
Last week’s hotter-than-expected inflation report surprised and rattled investors. The Consumer Price Index accelerated by 0.4 percent in March from the previous month. After a months-long slowdown, price increases in February and March reached their highest level since September and put the annual rate of inflation at 3.5 percent, firmly out of reach of the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target.
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April 8, 2024
Main Street Macro: Manufacturing: A Cinderella story
I grew up in Indiana, a big basketball state, so college ball has a special place in my heart. My favorite part of the NCAA college tournament has always been the Cinderella team, those players that surprise everyone with a winning streak. The economy’s winning streak isn’t a big surprise
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April 1, 2024
Main Street Macro: The good and the bad of stress
If you've ever had a job, you’ve probably experienced stress at work. There's no shame in it. But could workplace stress actually be a good thing? We examined this question, and found an answer.
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March 25, 2024
Main Street Macro: How to catch a moving target
Change is a constant theme on this blog. That’s not only because the Main Street economy is always in motion, which it is, but also because big, long-in-the-making changes have begun rapidly shifting the economic landscape. For business leaders and decision-makers, it can be hard to keep up, let alone catch changing trends.
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