At $2.53/gallon, the national average price of gasoline now officially represents a "sale"

The very long-term average price of a gallon of gasoline in June 2013 dollars going back to 1918, as reported here, is $2.60.

Using all items CPI since then to date, up 1.682%, $2.60 a gallon would come to about $2.64 today.

So this morning's national average of $2.532/gallon, if not officially CHEAP, is at least ON SALE at a discount of about 4%.

Sustained for a year, and hopefully longer, that would definitely mean something helpful to the American consumer's bottom line. Republican control of both chambers of Congress means it is more likely to continue than not, but you never know about these things. After all, both Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney were for the ridiculously expensive ethanol fuel program and subsidizing it with your tax dollars, which has only driven up the price of animal feed, fuel itself, and food.

Stay tuned.

Libertarian free-trade presidents named BUSH get the most blame for lost manufacturing jobs

Since Jimmy Carter took office in January 1977, during whose term manufacturing jobs reached their zenith of 19.5 million, 5.6 million net manufacturing jobs have disappeared, and with them the middle class lives to which they gave birth and from which other good-paying, middle class service jobs had been spawned.

Manufacturing jobs had risen steadily from their post-war low in February 1946 at 11.9 million to their 1979 height, just before Ronald Reagan brought us the Libertarian Revolution in the guise of conservative Republicanism. He gave us both Alan Greenspan in 1987, Fed Chairman and disciple of Ayn Rand, who steered the country right up to the rocks before jumping ship in 2006, and a quixotic message of freedom and free-trade which has made the investor class rich while middle class families have seen their lives wrecked under Reagan's libertarian successors who presided over the export of their good jobs to foreign countries. 

The two Bush presidents in particular, George Herbert Walker and his son George W., get the blame for most manufacturing jobs lost since the 1970s peaks. And George W. far and away gets more blame than anyone else, exporting fully 80% of the net jobs lost:

Carter +0.8 million

Reagan -0.6 million

Bush I -1.3 million

Clinton +0.3 million

Bush II -4.5 million

Obama -0.3 million.

The last thing this country needs in 2016 is a BUSH named Jeb, or a PAUL named Rand.

Despite big declines, completed foreclosures in October 2014 are still running 95% above normal

So says Corelogic here.

Completed foreclosures in October 2014 came to 41,000 nationally, 20,000 higher than the 2000-2006 average of 21,000 per month. Still, the level represents a big drop over the past year and is part of a consistent decline in houses reaching completed foreclosure going back 36 months.

4.2% of all mortgages were in serious delinquency in October.

FL, MI, TX, CA and GA alone accounted for 256,000 of 561,000 completed foreclosures in all states in the last twelve months, almost 46% of the total.

Michigan is still tops among non-judicial states in October for completed foreclosures in the last twelve months: 45,000.

Florida is tops in judicial states in the last 12 months: 118,000 completed foreclosures.

The half million plus completed foreclosures in the last twelve months represents the lowest level since October 2007 according to Corelogic. The relatively few additions since the September report mean that completed foreclosures since 2008 continue to hover around the 5.2 million level.

All figures are rounded.