Agricultual Economist and Farmer Michael Smith, Sherman Act, Part 2: The Small Farmer Pitchfork Army Most are now aware of the Biden Administrations recent announcement and press briefing for a plan to combat prices in the meat industry. If not, you can find a bit of information here: Readout of President Joe Biden’s Event with […]
To say that the Republican Party since Nixon had pandered to the lowest common denominator isn’t quite accurate, is it? Probably because the term is derived from the arithmetical least common denominator which makes one think of a unique number. Perhaps lowest common denominator was a more polite way of saying that the Republican Party […]
First data releases of 2022 confirm manufacturing strength, construction slowdown The first December data, the forward-looking ISM manufacturing report, has been released. Yesterday construction spending for November was also released. Let’s take a look at both. The ISM index, especially its new orders subindex, is an important short leading indicator for the production sector. In […]
Oil prices rose 55% in 2021, the most since 2009, while natural gas prices rose 47%, the most since 2016, Focus on Fracking, RJS Oil prices rose for a second week after the initial Omicron selloff, as oil traders and most everyone else have become convinced that Omicron poses little risk to oil demand . […]
Grading my 2021 forecasts Critical self-examination is, or at least ought to be, part of the process of making forecasts. After all, how can you learn if you don’t see how earlier hypotheses panned out? As I have usually done, let’s take a look back at how I forecast 2021 was going to look, to […]
RJS, MarketWatch 666, October’s Case–Shiller HPI; Advance Economic Indicators for November With the major month end reports already released last week, the only widely watched report released this week was the Case-Shiller Home Price Index for October from S&P Case-Shiller, which doesn’t even report any prices of homes, but just a index generated by averaging relative sales prices […]
Prof. Joel Eissenberg, Upfront Blog For Christmas 2021, Linda gave me a copy of “The St. Louis Commune of 1877: Communism in the Heartland” by Mark Kruger. The title certainly grabbed my attention. Having read it, there’s somewhat less than meets the eye here. The reason I never heard of this before is that the […]
Agricultural Economist and Farmer Michael Smith Sherman Act v. Modern Conglomerate Agriculture Multiple times the Biden Administration, along with Secretary Vilsack, and other administrations have made multiple public comments and now threats of investigation of beef producers and their horizontal and vertical integration over the past few decades. The targeting of the beef industry is […]
Mr. Etcetera The subtitle of T. R. Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population advertised its inclusion of “remarks on the speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other writers.” In volume I of Capital, Marx did not mention William Godwin’s name. One might say, rather, that Marx studiously avoided mentioning Godwin. He did, however, engage in a […]
Alan Collinge’s Student Loan Justice Facebook page. I keep talking about how the consolidation fees, late fees, forbearance interest, etc. and the interest on the previous adds up over time. Pretty soon, it surpasses the original loan balance. There are probably worse examples of this occurring. As it is, the non-principal payments are more than […]