Personal Economics 101

Interactive Chart here . 

The survey of business establishments has shown steady growth in employment and the smaller survey of households has shown virtually no job growth since March. This pattern held again for the November jobs report released Friday. Employment was up in the establishment survey by 263k, but the household survey dropped 138k. The divergence since March now stands at an enormous 2.7 million jobs.One reason is double counting in the establishment survey, with over 900k of the jobs added in the last year being workers with second jobs, not additional people employed. To be sure, it is still a hot employment market for workers with some 10 million job openings. Count us as skeptical that this rosy jobs market will continue much longer. The economy is hemorrhaging full-time jobs – we’ve lost over 2,600 full-time jobs every day since May.

Our national debt has soared to a record $31.3 trillion. Yet our federal budget deficit fell sharply in fiscal year 2022. The national debt continued to rise in FY2022 because the government spent more money than it received in revenues. The budget deficit for FY2022 fell sharply because federal spending to fight the COVID-19 pandemic declined significantly, but it was still a large deficit. The budget shortfall declined to $1.375 trillion, compared to the 2021 deficit of $2.776 trillion. President Biden has been trying to take credit for the huge decline in the budget deficit, but in fact his policies prevented the budget deficit from falling even further. America's growing national debt is the result of simple math — each year, there is a mismatch between spending and revenues. When the federal government spends more than it takes in, we have to borrow money to cover that annual deficit. And each year’s deficit adds to our growing national debt. Historically, our largest budget d...

An inverted yield curve is often seen as a warning that a recession is looming. Longer-term yields are usually higher than shorter-term yields because investors want to guard against the risk of unexpected inflation and rate increases. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note dropped to 0.78 percentage points below the two-year yield, the largest negative gap since 1981, before easing slightly. The inversion reflects both surprising positive news on inflation as well as the view that the Federal Reserve will continue to raise interest rates and keep them at elevated levels.

You do not want to get caught in the debt trap. Credit Card Debt is the most damaging to your financial freedom and welfare. See Getting Out of Debt  or I'm In Debt. How Do I Get Myself Out of This Mess. Total household debt balances continued their upward climb in the third quarter of 2022 with an increase of $351 billion, the largest nominal quarterly increase since 2007. This rise was driven by a $282 billion increase in mortgage balances, according to the latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt & Credit from the New York Fed’s Center for Microeconomic Data . Mortgages, historically the largest form of household debt, now comprise 71 percent of outstanding household debt balances, up from 69 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019.  An increase in credit card balances was also a boost to the total debt balances, with credit card balances up $38 billion from the previous quarter. On a year-over-year basis, this marked a 15 percent increase, the largest in more than twen...

By J.P. Morgan Wealth Management Birds and bees are great – but so are brains. In the last few decades, behavioral finance has emerged as a field of study that merges psychology and finance. It’s a subset within the field of behavioral economics, which was developed by, we assume, super smart dudes named Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. In 1979, they proposed the idea of prospect theory, which argues that people make decisions based on the potential value of gains and losses rather than the utility of a decision itself. Their empirical findings challenged the assumption that human rationality prevailed in modern economic theory – and in 2002, Kahneman even won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. (See, we were right, they are super smart.) To put it simply: investors are humans. We feel greed, fear, hope, excitement – all sorts of emotions impact our behavior on the micro and macro levels. It is precisely because we are human that we often make irrational decisions. Behavior...

 

See also: Biden Forces America to Pay Climate Reparations I've written about the business and purpose behind climate change before. The climate change movement is really just a climate change shake down. This crusade isn’t about changing the temperature of the earth. Even the most well-meaning environmental activist can’t really believe that building windmills and driving Teslas is going to cool the planet. This all about money. Hundreds of billions of dollars of government handouts. The one resolution of agreement among the politicians from 100 nations at the “Cop 27” climate conference in Egypt was that rich nations owe poor nations “climate reparations.” This is the looney concept that America is responsible for the supposed man-made warming of the planet by burning fossil fuels over the last hundred or so years. Joe Biden and his goof ball sidekick John Kerry were all to eager to buy into this “blame America first” narrative and write a 10-figure check to atone for our sin...

Two recent articles I've come across explain the phenomenon of inflation very well. Or pick up a book if you want more depth. Money Mischief would be a place to start.  Milton Friedman’s priceless lessons on inflation Inflation – it’s on everyone’s mind. Everyone is talking about how inflation is the highest it has been in forty years. With the slowing economy, what was said to be a “transitory” phase has turned into “stagflation.” Some are blaming the government. The government is blaming the war. Republicans are blaming the Democrats, and the left is blaming greedy corporations. As the blame game and alarm rage, it remains a fact that most of us don’t know what inflation is. Few know what causes it. Fewer know how it can be curbed. Under the circumstances, it pays to listen to the respected American economist Milton Friedman as he deconstructs this “alarming” phenomenon. The Nobel Laureate, speaking at the University of San Diego and the San Diego Chamber of Commerce in 1978, bu...

I guess my portfolio (13% Bond, 70% Stock and 17% Cash) isn't doing to badly, with a YTD return (including dividends) of 3%. About 25% of my stocks are either in, or were, in energy. I sold about half my holdings a few months ago and invested in income producing ETFs.

Employed full time: Median usual weekly real earnings: Wage and salary workers: 16 years and over

  As Milton Friedman said: Inflation is a monetary issue. Think the money supply had anything to do with that? And what caused this? Spending by Congress and Quantitative Easing by the Fed.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse. Democrats are now pushing two very bad ideas: 1) Do away with the "gig" economy, as California has done with its draconian restrictions on independent contractors; and 2) nationalize the oil and gas industry.  The attack on American's right to work From National Review  (subscriber only):  The Department of Labor wants to effectively outlaw gig work. The Golden State has been there, done that, and the results aren’t pretty. The Biden administration has effectively declared war on gig work, with its Department of Labor proposing a new federal regulation inspired by California’s controversial AB 5 law that would limit people’s ability to be classified as independent contractors and work as they choose. This proposal, if successful, would cruelly upset millions of lives. At least 57 million Americans are currently involved in gig work, a number expected to grow to more than 86 million within the next five years. More on  ...

by Kaylee McGhee White Reposted from the Washington Examiner I have written extensively over the past year about the victims of gender ideology : the children and young adults struggling with the normal pangs of maturation who get swept away by a movement that promises them identity and community, and the parents who feel helpless as they desperately try to drag them back to reality. But let’s be clear about something: Not everyone in this movement is a victim. All you have to do is watch some of the videos highlighted by accounts like Libs of TikTok , and you’ll realize that many of these gender ideologues are unabashed activists who would love nothing more than to shove their crazed distortion of reality down your throat. They know that what they are preaching is nonsensical, and they relish the idea of forcing you to conform to it. Here’s a perfect example of this kind of narcissism, which runs rampant in leftist circles: This is a young man who is so obsessed with himself and his n...

Why economic forecasts are unreliable. Or maybe it's the CBO. The Fed and most economist have not done very well, historically. This chart shows projections for inflation compared to actual inflation. 

Joe Biden signed into law the horrific Inflation Acceleration Act – which, as you know, increases government taxes and spending by roughly ANOTHER $750 billion. One of the groups that betrayed taxpayers and fiscal sanity in this fight was the inaptly named Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. To believe this bill will lead to a “responsible federal budget” is about as divorced from reality as to believe that this is an “inflation reduction act.” Yet here is the statement that Maya McGuineas of CFRB put out to the press: This legislation focuses on lowering health care and energy costs, raising revenue, and reducing deficits and is exactly what the doctor ordered. Senator Manchin deserves tremendous credit for pushing this fiscally responsible reconciliation bill. I'm speechless. The Heritage Foundation reports that the bill will INCREASE the deficit by “at least $110 billion through 2031.” The bill raises $300 billion for corporate give-always for the climate change industri...

By Jack Crowe National Review Inflation surged 8.5 percent in July compared to the same month last year, down slightly from the four-decade high reached in June, the Labor Department announced Wednesday. The Consumer Price Index, a key measure of the cost of goods and services, dropped slightly due to a decline in record-high fuel prices which drove the previous month’s historic inflation spike. The increase also beat expectations as economists surveyed by Dow Jones expected headline CPI to increase 8.7 percent year-over-year in July. Excluding volatile food and fuel prices, core inflation rose 5.9 percent annually and 0.3 percent monthly. The average national fuel price stood at $4.010 per gallon as of Wednesday, down from a record-high $5.016 in mid-June. Despite the slight relief offered by declining fuel prices, the Federal Reserve is still expected to further raise interest rates to bring inflation closer to its target of 2 percent. Voters across the country consistently rank infl...

From the Tax Foundation. Full analysis here .  Reconciling the reconciliation bill: The Inflation Reduction Act, successor to the House-passed Build Back Better Act of late 2021, has been touted by President Biden to, among other things, help reduce the country’s crippling inflation. Among the major tax changes are a 15 percent corporate minimum tax, drug price controls, IRS tax enforcement, and a tax hike on carried interest to pay for increased spending on energy and health insurance subsidies as well as deficit reduction. See a more comprehensive list here . According to our model, the bill would raise about $304 billion in net revenue from 2022 to 2031, but would do so in an economically inefficient manner, reducing long-run economic output by about 0.1 percent, eliminating about 30,000 full-time equivalent U.S. jobs, and reducing average after-tax incomes for taxpayers across every income group in the long run. What about inflation? On balance, the long-run impact on inflation...

Families earning less than $400,000, according to Joe Biden were not going to pay even “a dime of new taxes” under his tax plan.  This was Joe Biden’s signature promise. It was the 2020 campaign’s equivalent to George H W Bush’s “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge back in 1988.  Anyone who believed Joe probably deserves to pay more taxes.  Anyway, here are the facts. Congress’s official budget and tax scorekeeper, the Joint Committee on Taxation, finds taxes rising in every income bracket. It’s a $17 billion a year whack at the lower and middle-class Americans.   

S ome people think America's main fiscal problem is the gap between the two lines. In other words, they worry about deficits and debt. But the real problem is government spending. And that's true whether the spending burden is financed by taxes, borrowing, or printing money. Full story here .

Technically, because GDP was negative for two quarters, it's a recession. However, there are caveats to current economic conditions, which mean if it is a recession, it's very mild. And there's still that pesky 2yr/5yr bond rate inversion (2.9/2.72). It's inflation that is the beast, which will undo everything.   T he GDP Price Index came in at an 8.7% increase, well above expectations of an 8.0% gain and compared to the unrevised 8.2% rise seen in Q1. By Kelly Evans The Exchange , CNBC Why was real GDP negative in the first half of this year? Because inflation ate up all the gains. The bombshell report this morning showed that real GDP shrank again in the second quarter, by 0.9% annualized, after a 1.6% drop in Q1. But wait, how can real GDP be shrinking while the labor market at the same time added 2.7 million jobs, and the unemployment rate fell from 4% to 3.6%? Because inflation ate up all the real economic gains. Nominal GDP--actual dollars before any adjustment fo...

In the race for Texas governor, Beto O'Rouke keeps claiming that he'll fully fund education. But it's already over-funded, and without the legislature, he can't do anything. Empty promises. Currently, more than $60 billion is spent on Texas education (not including universities). 

Federal bond yields, when inverted, normally signify an upcoming recession. That's something we've been anticipating for some time, so whether it's a predictor or confirmation, is anyone's guess. It's not the first time yields have inverted in the last year or so.  It's just something all investors should be aware of, and plan for accordingly. I think the overall market has priced in these facts already, with the DJIA down about 15%, the SP500 down 18%, the NASDAQ100 down 25%, and the Russell down 27%.  These declines are up from yearly lows, with rebounds of 5% to 10% in the last month or so. This chart shows the short term bonds have larger yields than the longer term 10-year and 30-year bonds. It should be the other way around. 

Food prices helped drive the Consumer Price Index up 9.1% in the past year, marking the biggest annual increase in 41 years. According to government statistics, food costs rose 10.4% in the past year — the fastest pace since February 1981. Driving the increase: Energy prices were responsible for more than half of the monthly gains in headline inflation, with gas prices rising over 11% last month, Axios ' Neil Irwin and Courtenay Brown write . However, the average price of regular-grade gas is falling. As of this morning, it is at $3.92 in the greater Austin area — down from $4.65 a month ago.

The Republicans on the congressional Joint Economic Committee have calculated that from January 2021 through the end of this year, inflation will have cost the typical American family nearly $8,400. If these trends continue, this means that inflation will have erased all of the $6,400 median household income gains that were made under Trump. Here are the highlights: Prices increased 13.3 percent from January 2021 to June 2022, costing the average American household $718 last month alone Even if prices stop increasing altogether, the inflation that has already occurred will cost the average American household $8,616 over the next 12 months. In the United States overall, the monthly inflation cost in June 2022 was highest within transportation ($343), followed by energy ($214), food ($85), and shelter ($81). Families in Colorado are facing the highest transportation inflation ($487) and shelter inflation costs ($149); families in California are facing the highest food inflation costs (...

As shown by the chart below, the Biden administration is selling off US Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPR) at the fastest pace on record. As of today, we are now at the lowest levels since 1985. Here is where things get concerning: despite the biggest decline ever in the SPR, total US oil inventories (outside of the government’s emergency SPR) have barely budged off their lows. Let me repeat that. The biggest release of oil ever in the US has barely increased our total domestic inventories. Low supplies can only mean higher prices (oil was at $97 today, July 15, down from its peak of $130 in March 2022) in the future, if demand remains the same -- or increases. you cannot have economic growth without energy to power that growth, and we will continue to see a humanitarian crisis until governments all over the world work to increase natural gas, nuclear energy, and oil production. If they don’t, shortages, cost-of-living spikes, and disruptions to our food and energy systems are likely t...

On a national scale, housing affordability weakened in May as monthly mortgage payments jumped to 5.31% versus the same time last year at 3.01%. The housing affordability index illustrates a decline, although the real estate market remains robust. Although there’s been some flattening due to higher rates and fears of a recession, these headwinds could bring the supply and demand back in alignment following months of frenzied home-buying post-pandemic and a seller's market riddled with bidding wars.

Inflation at the wholesale level climbed 11.3% in June compared with a year earlier, the latest painful reminder that inflation is running hot through the American economy. The Labor Department reported Thursday that the U.S. producer price index, or PPI — which measures inflation before it hits consumers — rose at the fastest pace since hitting a record 11.6% in March. Last month’s jump in wholesale inflation was led by energy prices, which soared 54% from a year earlier. But even excluding food and energy prices, which can swing wildly from month to month, producer prices in June jumped 8.2% from June 2021. On a month-to-month basis, wholesale inflation rose a substantial 1.1% from May to June. Thursday's PPI report came a day after the Labor Department reported that surging prices for gas, food and rent catapulted consumer inflation to a new four-decade peak in June, further pressuring households and likely sealing the case for another large interest rate hike by the Federal Res...

More than half of all Americans weren’t even alive the last time prices rose at this pace of 9.1%. Yet Democrats say dam the torpedoes and full speed ahead with another $1 trillion tax and spend bill. Stimulus is a large part of what caused this runaway inflation to begin with. I wonder why they don't get it.  Biden remarked that the data was backward looking, that June's numbers didn't reflect the drop in oil prices in July. Nothing to worry about. These aren't the droids you're looking for. OMG. All data is backward looking; otherwise, its a projection or prediction, or just a wild ass guess. Even the Carter administration didn't have this level of incompetence.  This is a scary bunch ruling Washington these days. November can’t get here soon enough . 

From March 2020 through June 2022, the federal government added $7 trillion in debt. To put that in perspective, the federal debt reached a total of $7 trillion in 2004, covering a span from George Washington to the first term of George W. Bush. That means the federal government has racked up 215 years’ worth of debt in just 27 months. While some amount of deficit spending might have been hard to avoid during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Washington kept breaking out the credit card to continue an unnecessary and wasteful spending spree, oversaturating the economy and making inflation problems inevitable.

The untold story about “green energy” is that it can’t possibly be scaled up to provide anywhere near the energy to replace fossil fuels. (Unless we are headed back to the stone age – which is what some of the “de-growth” advocates favor). A new  World Bank Group report  finds that the production of minerals, such as graphite, lithium and cobalt, could increase by nearly 500% by 2050, to meet the growing demand for clean energy technologies. It estimates that over 3 billion tons of minerals and metals will be needed to deploy wind, solar and geothermal power, as well as energy storage, required for achieving a below 2°C future.  Recently, even some environmentalists are pointing to a the World Bank report showing that moving toward 100% solar, wind, and electric battery energy would be “just as destructive to the planet as fossil fuels.” This was the conclusion of a story in Foreign Policy magazine in 2019, The Limits of Clean Energy . A low-carbon future will be very min...

The Federal Reserve minutes of the May meeting gave investors a pretty clear roadmap for the summer. The minutes, out Wednesday afternoon, painted a picture of an FOMC strongly focused on inflation, with rate hikes of 50 basis points in the June and July meetings. But some members also indicated that price pressures may not be getting worse. Stocks rally: The market appeared to take the minutes as more dovish than hawkish. Half-point hikes were already priced in for the next couple of meetings and there was no mention of 75-basis-point moves that had become the base case for a few Wall Street banks at the end of April. The S&P 500 (SPY) rose about 1% to finish out the session and S&P futures (SPX) are up again this morning. Treasury yields (SHY) (TBT) (TLT) continued to creep lower Friday. Data dependence: "We think that after the July meeting the Fed is likely to become more 'data dependent' with regard to rate hikes, which essentially means that the policy path a...

The wheels are coming off the economy and the stock market has suffered one of its worst two month sell offs in American history, but that’s not the way our esteemed Fed Chairman Jerome Powell sees things. Here are his comments from last week: “The underlying strength of the U.S. economy is really good right now. The U.S. economy is strong, the labor market is extremely strong. It is still at very healthy levels. Retail sales numbers, the economy is strong. Consumer balance sheets are healthy. Businesses are healthy. The banks are well-capitalized. This is a strong economy.” Now isn’t that reassuring? Never mind that the growth rate of this “strong economy” so far this year is less than one percent. But he wasn’t done with his happy talk. When the Fed chief was asked about whether he is behind the curve on raising rates (which he clearly is), Powell had this to say: "By the standards of central bank practices in recent years, we've moved about as fast as we have in several dec...

A normal supply and demand curve indicates that as prices increase, demand will moderate or decline, until the curve reaches a new equilibrium. That is what is happening this year in housing.  Sales of new single-family homes plunged in April, declining 16.6 percent to 591,000 at a seasonally-adjusted annual rate from a 709,000 pace in March and just slightly ahead of the 582,000 pace at the bottom of the lockdown recession.  The April drop follows a 10.5 percent decline in March, a 4.7 percent fall in February, and a 1.0 percent drop in January. The four-month run of decreases leaves sales down 26.9 percent from the year-ago level (see chart). Meanwhile, 30-year fixed rate mortgages were 5.3 percent in late May, up sharply from a low of 2.65 percent in January 2021. The median sales price of a new single-family home was $450,600, up from $435,000 in April (not seasonally adjusted). The gain from a year ago is 19.6 percent versus a 21.0 percent 12-month gain in April. On a 12-...

(Update 5/24: Since publishing this article (May 23), the price of Natural Gas increased to $8.81 per MMBtu or 8.6% on the NY Mercantile Exchange. The price of oil is $110.57 per barrel.) Since Biden was elected president with his declaration of war against fossil fuel production, the oil price has spiked from $60 a barrel to above $100 a barrel, an increase of about 70%. Gas prices at the pump have surged nationally at a similar pace, from $2.59 a gallon under Trump to about $4.59 a gallon last week.  But don’t fret, because the Biden White House is “doing everything we can to bring gas prices down.” Another energy crisis may be brewing, and that is a result of the surge of natural gas prices. (Don’t forget, natural gas is by far the number one source for electric power generation in America.) Here at home, those prices have climbed from less than $3 per MMBtu in 2020 to $7.40 as of last week. (See chart.) This is close to a 150% increase in price. James Grant from the Interest Ra...

As I've mentioned before these pages, price controls that were last employed on a widespread basis during the 1970s inflation era were eventually discarded by both parties as an abysmal failure. So we shouldn’t be too surprised that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to bring them back. On Thursday, Pelosi pushed through the House her Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act – which would allow the president to declare an “energy emergency proclamation” when prices are rising. During the emergency, companies would be barred from charging “unconscionably excessive” prices for gasoline or any other fuels. The Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general would be empowered to pursue violators. There is no legal definition of price gouging, but apparently, it is the new pornography – the pols know it when they see it. Sadly, only four Democrats – Liz Fletcher of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Kathleen Rice of New York, and Stephanie Murphy of Florida – voted no. Pelosi isn’t do...

Wholesale prices in the U.S. soared 11% in April from a year earlier, a hefty gain that indicates high inflation will remain a burden for consumers and businesses in the months ahead. The Labor Department said Thursday that its producer price index (PPI) — which measures inflation before it reaches consumers — climbed 0.5% in April from March. That is a slowdown from the previous month, however, when it jumped 1.6%. The cost of groceries in the past 12 months is up 10.8%, the largest 12-month increase since November 1980, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing Labor Department consumer price index (CPI) data. Grocery costs rose 1% in April after increasing by 1.5% in March; they have risen by 1% or more in the past four months. Dairy prices, led by milk, shot up the most in April, by 2.5%. The April year-over-year increase in the April PPI declined from the 11.5% annual gain in March, which was the biggest increase since records began in 2010. The producer price data captures inflatio...

Inflation slowed in April after seven months of relentless gains, a tentative sign that price increases may be peaking while still imposing a financial strain on American households. Though it wasn't much, markets responded positively. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.3% month-over-month (m/m) in April, above the Bloomberg consensus estimate calling for a 0.2% gain, and compared to March's unrevised 1.2% increase. The core rate, which strips out food and energy, increased 0.6% m/m, topping forecasts of a 0.4% rise and compared to March's unadjusted 0.3% increase.  Compared to last year, prices were 8.3% higher for the headline rate, above estimates of an 8.1% increase but a deceleration from the prior month's unrevised 8.5% rise. The core rate was up 6.2% y/y, north of projections of a 6.0% gain, and down from March's unrevised 6.5% rise.   Nationally, the price of a gallon of regular gas has reached a record $4.40, according to AAA, though that figure isn’t ad...

Why Some Rate Quotes Are So Different And Why "Points" Are On The Rise It was yet another tough week for the mortgage market with rates rising to their highest levels since 2009, but how high have they actually risen? Energy up nearly 50% YTD as crude oil climbs to $110 per barrel WTI crude futures ( CL1:COM ) jumped 4.9% for the week to $109.77/bbl, July Brent futures ( CO1:COM ) also added 4.9% to $112.39/bbl, and gasoline futures ( UGA ) in New York settled at a record high $3.76/gal, three weeks before the start of the U.S. summer driving season. Losing the People? Then Change the Rules Court-packing—the attempt to enlarge the size of the Supreme Court for short-term political purposes—used to be a dirty word in the history of American jurisprudence. The Disinformation Governance Machine Right out of 1984. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced on April 27 the creation of the “Disinformation Governance Board.” The Nation's Top Scientists Lied Scott ...

Is there a housing bubble? U.S. housing affordability fell last month to near the lowest level ever as home prices surge. Mortgage interest rates now exceed 5.2% – up from 3.6% two years ago. And the Fed is raising rates again – as it should – but this too will likely raise mortgage rates. The average mortgage payment is now $1,800 a month. That’s 70% higher than the pre-Covid high. The only other time home payments were this high was in 2007 on the eve of the Great Financial Crisis. As the chart below from Black Knight’s mortgage monitor shows, home prices are up 19.9% over this time a year ago. Yes, that’s very good news for homeowners as their home equity surges, but a killer for home buyers – especially first-time buyers. Loan to income levels are also rising, which makes defaults more likely. Is any of this sounding familiar? All of this has been artificially inflated by years of artificially low rates, Fed policies of purchasing hundreds of billions of dollars of mortgage-backed...

We should note that the entire explanation for the lousy GDP number was the 8.5% inflation rate. As the chart below shows, if we still had 2% inflation we had just recently, the economy would have grown in real terms at a brisk pace. But with the current inflation, the economy has to expand by more than 8.5% just to stay even.  While some also noted (or bragged about it) that consumer spending stayed strong in Q1, that was also due to inflation. Consumers just spent more money because everything cost more.

The U.S. economy shrank last quarter for the first time since the pandemic recession struck two years ago, contracting at a 1.4% annual rate, but consumers and businesses kept spending in a sign of underlying resilience. The negative growth rate missed even the subdued Dow Jones estimate of a 1% gain for the quarter. GDP measures the output of goods and services in the U.S. for the three-month period. Despite the disappointing number, markets paid little attention to the report, with stocks and bond yields both mostly higher. Some of the GDP decline came from factors likely to reverse later in the year, raising hopes that the U.S. can avoid a recession. The steady spending suggested that the economy could keep expanding this year even though the Federal Reserve plans to raise rates aggressively to fight the inflation surge. The first quarter's growth was hampered mainly by a slower restocking of goods in stores and warehouses and by a sharp drop in exports. The Commerce Department...