Category Archives: Economy

12/13/21

The Inflation, CPI, PPI, Earnings Boogie

I think everyone in the United States understands we have entered a period of increasing prices — inflation. Nobody thinks it is actually going to be transitory.

Even the Biden admin says it’s going to be here through the end of 2023 after suggesting it would magically disappear by the end of 2021. Nay, not so.

Those who are students of the economy will fairly point at the extraordinarily naïve energy policy actions of the Biden admin as a trigger point or at least a milestone.

Nobody has missed that the price of gasoline has doubled since Joe Biden took office.

Glendale, California

Continue reading →

11/27/21

Understanding Energy Pricing

It is very easy to understand gasoline pricing — you drive up to the pump, study the price of different grades of gasoline, insert your card, and pump your gas.

[The price of gas taken together with the price of groceries makes one as intimately knowledgeable of the state of inflation in America as a Nobel Laureate economist.]

Today, when you fill up it costs about twice what it did when Joe Biden was elected President.

Glendale, California — I have a 24-gallon tank. Do the bloody math. Ouch!

But, what really controls the price of gasoline? Is it crude oil prices? Continue reading →

11/8/21

Pimping With Experts

When a politician needs to counter some terrible narrative as it relates to behavior or policy what does he/she do?

They find some EXPERTS to pimp out to support their outrageous behavior or policy.

The Fifty Intel EXPERTS

You will recall during the last days of the 2020 election, candidate Joe Biden was confronted by the allegation that a laptop owned by his son — in the possession of the FBI for a year and supposedly being “investigated” — was filled with damaging information.

Joe had famously asserted that he had had nothing to do with his nefarious son’s business dealings with amongst others, the sovereign nation of China. The information on the laptop showed this was a lie of gargantuan proportions and that not only was he actively involved, but he was the beneficiary of “10% for the Big Guy.”

The information on the laptop began to leak out and showed a drug crazed Hunter Biden engaged in various sorts of churlish and illegal behavior.

What did candidate Joe Biden do? He pimped some EXPERTS. You can read the contemporaneous article here:

5o Intel Pimp EXPERTS Opine

Now, in a move that has been proven a lie and incredibly cynical candidate Joe Biden rounded up “50 former intelligence officials” who warned the naive, gullible, and callow American public that the laptop, the information on the laptop, and Joe’s balding forehead were “signs of a Russian disinformation operation.” Continue reading →

10/31/21

Some Thoughts On Job Creation

Presidents are always puffing up and beating their chests about all the jobs they’ve created by their general goodness, wisdom, and pluck.

Here’s the thing — we don’t need any more jobs in the short term. We have plenty of jobs.

We need folks to fill jobs. Let me show you why I think this:

 1. The US Bureau of Labor Statistic publishes a nifty monthly report called the JOLTs report — Job Openings and Labor Turnover. Catchy, eh?

It always seems to be a little behind the times, because the most recent one was published on 12 October and it had the August 2021 numbers.

 2. The report provides information on:

The number of open jobs;

The number of hires;

The number of folks who have quit their jobs; and,

The number of folks who have been involuntarily laid off, discharged, or “other” separations. Continue reading →

10/30/21

Tech City Rent As A Measure Of Inflation

I am a little fixated on inflation these days. I look at modestly obscure sources of data to try to track the old bitch so when I read an article on average apartment rents in tech city markets, I had to bring it to your attention.

Let me cut to the chase.

 1. Rents went down a little during the pandemic. The general sense is that rents went down about 5% nationwide.

 2. With the advent of the vaccine, rents began to turn around and climb upward as folks began to return to offices and the migration to tech meccas resurged, and folks began to quit jobs to get better jobs (and better apartments).

Rents are up 25% in Austin By God Texas. Hello, America, can you say INFLATION?

Austin By God Texas

Continue reading →

10/29/21

Hyperinflation

The US government, the Biden admin, has already passed one huge Pandemic-related bill earlier this year and is in the death throes of passing two more:

 1. The American Recovery Plan Act was passed by the Dems to the tune of $1,900,000,000,000.

 2. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is waiting passage to the tune of $1,200,000,000,000.

 3. The Build Back Better Bill (The Bernie Sanders, “Damn Right I’m A Socialist” Bill) is awaiting passage to the tune of $3,500,000,000,000, but has been sent to the gym and whittled down to $1,900,000,000,000.

This is a “nominal” total of $5,000,000,000,000 ($1.9T + $1.2T + $1.9T = $5,000,000,000,000), but it will actually be far more — at least 2X — than that nominal amount because of the bogus way Congress prices such bills.

See:

The Black Magic of Congressional Arithmetic

for an explanation of how Congressional arithmetic really works. Continue reading →

10/28/21

A Word About GDP, Please?

If you were up early this morning, you learned that quarterly US GDP growth was a miserly 2% in Q3 – 2021 which was a disappointment when compared to Q2 -2021 in which GDP grew by 6.7%. The pundit class was expecting about 3%.

This is NOT a fair comparison because Q2 – 2021 is what I call a “dead cat bounce” (imagine a cat thrown from the top of a high rise office building — that’s the dead cat bounce) in which stymied and frustrated economic forces were unleashed resulting in the afore mentioned dead cat bounce.

It is also fair to note that personal consumer consumption grew by 1.6% in Q3 -2021 versus 12% in Q2 -2021. Continue reading →