Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Weekly Indicators for August 31 – September 4 at Seeking Alpha

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for August 31 – September 4 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Another long leading indicator, corporate profits, are expected to improve substantially in Q3, meaning that yet another forecasting element for the economy one year from now has stopped being a negative. Lots […]

Markets and Entrepreneurs

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? That’s easy, First, there had to be a market. Without a market, no matter how good the idea, how well capitalized the enterprise, how competent the management team, or how skilled the workforce; there can be no business. So, where do markets come from? Markets seem to […]

August jobs report: continued slow incremental progress

August jobs report: continued slow incremental progress HEADLINES: 1,371,000 million jobs gained. The gains since May total about 48% of the 22.1 million job losses in March and April. The alternate and more volatile measure in the household report was 3,756,000 jobs gained, which factors into the unemployment and underemployment rates below. U3 unemployment rate […]

Initial and continuing claims: very slow “less worse” progress continues

Initial and continuing claims: very slow “less worse” progress continues   The continued good news in this Thursday morning’s jobless claims report is that the trend of “less worse” news is intact. But the improvement has slowed dramatically and is still at a level of about 150,000 higher than the worst weekly levels of the […]

Should We Fear A Reappearance Of Inflation?

Should We Fear A Reappearance Of Inflation?  In today’s Washington Post Robert J. Samuelson has raised the possibility that the Federal Reserve may be setting the US up for a reappearance of inflation.  He invoked the 1960s and 1970s when supposedly the Fed allowed inflation to get out of control out of a supposedly misguided […]

Trump and Antifa

No one seems to know what or who Antifa is; so far be it from me to pretend that I do. I did meet a self-avowed one once. Interviewed the young man for 30-45 minutes; even talked on the phone a few minutes with his parents who lived in Oakland. By way of providing context; […]

DeJoy’s Fix for the Post Office: The Wrong Time, the Wrong Plan, the Wrong Man

PMG Louis DeJoy’s Fix for the Post Office, Mark Jamison, Save The Post Office, Aug. 29, 2020 After years of being a journalistic backwater the Postal Service is all over the news. From the usual contextually vacant reports about financial losses, we shifted to meaty and sometimes sensational coverage about the removal of Blue collections […]