Category Archives: Economy

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 →

10/26/21

Measuring Consumer Confidence

We are inundated with media, pundits, and bloggers telling America what its opinion should be.

We are similarly flooded with pollsters — who seem to get Presidential elections and politics in general abysmally wrong — telling us what we think.

There are three long term, reliable measures of consumer/business confidence upon which I have historically relied to provide an accurate picture of the state of affairs in the country:

The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index

The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index

I particularly like to be able to see the trend as I am a firm believer that the trend is your friend. It shows you things that a discrete number cannot.

Continue reading →

10/22/21

The Black Magic Of Congressional Arithmetic

When one reads anything these days one is confronted by headline grabbing numbers as to the “cost” of various pieces of legislation — right now this falls under the headings of “infrastructure” and “social infrastructure.”

There are two bills at play now in the US Congress.

 1. Bill No 1 — the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (10 Aug 2021), priced at $1,200,000,000,000.

 2. Bill No 2 — the “social infrastructure” bill, known as the Build Back Better Bill informally, is intended to be passed by reconciliation, a legislative trick that requires a simple majority in both the House and Senate. This bill is priced at $3,500,000,000,000.

These two bills are in addition to the American Recovery Plan Act already enacted by POTUS Biden and the US Congress (the Dems) for $1,900,000,000,000.

We are talking nominal spending of more than $6,600,000,000,000 — which I believe understates the total expenditures by more than $3-4,000,000,000,000 because of Congressional Black Magic Arithmetic.

That is a total of approximately $10,000,000,000,000 which will ultimately add about $7,000,000,000,000 to the National Debt.

Hello, America! Are y’all paying attention to this?

“Who are you going to believe? Me, your Truthful Aunt Nancy, or that rusty bag of bolts, Big Red Car? I’m going to squeeze his headlights but good. Look into my eyes.”

Continue reading →