by Calculated Risk on 9/18/2016 08:06:00 PM

From James Hamilton at Econbrowser: Why didn’t the recent oil price decline help the U.S. economy more? A few excerpts:

Baumeister and Kilian update those calculations and conclude that there was a significant boost to consumer spending, noting that real consumption spending grew on average by 3.1% over the two years since oil prices began falling in 2014:Q3 compared with only 2.0% during the preceding two years. ... But gains to consumer spending were mostly offset by a drop in oil-related investment spending.
...
Their paper examined a number of details of the economic response. The bottom line is that there seemed to be little net stimulus to the U.S. economy from the collapse in oil prices.

Weekend:
• Schedule for Week of Sept 18, 2016

Monday:
• At 10:00 AM ET, The September NAHB homebuilder survey. The consensus is for a reading of  60, unchanged from 60 in August.  Any number above 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as good than poor.

From CNBC: Pre-Market Data and Bloomberg futures: S&P futures are up 6 and DOW futures are up 55 (fair value).

Oil prices were down over the last week with WTI futures at $43.67 per barrel and Brent at $46.29 per barrel.  A year ago, WTI was at $45, and Brent was at $47 - so prices are down slightly year-over-year.

Here is a graph from Gasbuddy.com for nationwide gasoline prices. Nationally prices are at $2.21 per gallon (down about $0.10 per gallon from a year ago).