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Open thread May 10, 2022

Dan Crawford | May 10, 2022 6:00 am

Comments (9) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
9 Comments
  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    May 10, 2022 at 6:59 am

    For Tens of Millions of Americans, the Good Times Are Right Now

    NY Times – May 10

    Their houses are piggy banks, their retirement accounts are up and their bosses are eager to please. When the boom ends, everything will change. 

    This is an era of great political division and dramatic cultural upheaval. Much more quietly, it has been a time of great financial reward for a large number of Americans.

    For the 158 million who are employed, prospects haven’t been this bright since men landed on the moon. As many as half of those workers have retirement accounts that were fattened by a prolonged bull market in stocks. There are 83 million owner-occupied homes in the United States. At the rate they have been increasing in value, a lot of them are in effect a giant piggy bank that families live inside. …

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    May 10, 2022 at 7:53 am

    <a href=”https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/10/business/economy-boom-times.html”>For Tens of Millions of Americans, the Good Times Are Right Now</a>

    NY Times – May 10

    Their houses are piggy banks, their retirement accounts are up and their bosses are eager to please. When the boom ends, everything will change.

    This is an era of great political division and dramatic cultural upheaval. Much more quietly, it has been a time of great financial reward for a large number of Americans.

    For the 158 million who are employed, prospects haven’t been this bright since men landed on the moon. As many as half of those workers have retirement accounts that were fattened by a prolonged bull market in stocks. There are 83 million owner-occupied homes in the United States. At the rate they have been increasing in value, a lot of them are in effect a giant piggy bank that families live inside. …

    • Fred C. Dobbs says:
      May 10, 2022 at 7:55 am

      For Tens of Millions of Americans, the Good Times Are Right Now

       

    • Fred C. Dobbs says:
      May 10, 2022 at 7:57 am

      This boom does not get celebrated much. It was a slow-build phenomenon in a country where news is stale within hours. It has happened during a time of fascination with the schemes of the truly wealthy (see: Musk, Elon) and against a backdrop of increased inequality. If you were unable to buy a house because of spiraling prices, the soaring amount of homeowners’ equity is not a comfort.

      The queasy stock market might be signaling that the boom is ending. A slowing economy, renewed inflation, high gas prices and rising interest rates could all undermine the gains achieved over the years. But for the moment, this flood of wealth is quietly redefining retirement, helping fuel Silicon Valley and stoking a boom in leisure and entertainment. It is boosting corporate profits by unprecedented amounts while also giving just about everyone the notion that a better job might be within reach.

      More than 4.5 million workers voluntarily quit in March, the highest number since the government started keeping this statistic in 2000, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported last week. A few years ago, the monthly total was between three million and 3.5 million.

      “Maybe it’s easier to focus on the negative, but a huge number of people, maybe 40 million households, have been doing pretty well,” said Dean Baker, an economist who was a co-founder of the liberal-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research. “You’d have to go back to the late 1990s to find a similar era. Before that, the 1960s.”

      This widespread wealth throws light on why the number of workers who say they expect to be working past their early 60s has fallen below 50 percent for the first time. It accounts for the abundance of $1 billion start-ups known as unicorns — more than 1,000 now, up from about 200 in 2015. It offers a reason for the rise in interest in unionizing companies from Amazon to Apple to Starbucks, as hourly workers seek to claim their share. …

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    May 11, 2022 at 11:20 pm

    US Inflation is Still Climbing Rapidly

    NY Times – May 11

    The pressures that have kept inflation elevated for months remain strong, fresh data released Wednesday showed, a challenge for households that are trying to shoulder rising expenses and for the White House and Federal Reserve as they try to put the economy on a steadier path.

    Annual inflation moderated for the first time in months in April, but the Consumer Price Index still increased 8.3 percent, an uncomfortably rapid pace. At the same time, a closely watched measure that subtracts food and fuel costs actually accelerated.

    Core inflation — which excludes costs for groceries and gas — picked up 0.6 percent in April from the prior month, faster than its 0.3 percent increase in March. That measure is particularly important for policymakers, who use it as a gauge to help determine where inflation is headed.

    While the letup in annual inflation may have given President Biden and the Fed a dose of comfort, the overall picture remains worrying. Policymakers have a long way to go to bring price increases down to more normal and stable levels, and the newest data is likely to keep them focused on trying to slow an inflation rate that remains near its fastest pace in 40 years. …

    Consumer Price Index Summary

     

    • Fred C. Dobbs says:
      May 11, 2022 at 11:28 pm

      Go figure…

      Retail investors are continuing to buy the dip in tech despite recent turmoil

      As of its Wednesday close, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite on Wall Street has plummeted more than 27% so far this year.

      Even bigger losses have been seen in Asia, where the Hang Seng Tech index in Hong Kong has fallen more than 29%. On the mainland, the Star 50 index — a collection of the 50 largest stocks on the tech-heavy Star Market — has tumbled more than 28% in the same period.

      Investors appear to have interpreted the pullback in tech as a buying opportunity …

       

      • Fred C. Dobbs says:
        May 12, 2022 at 12:20 pm

        Hmmm. The operative buying strategy may be that Apple/Microsoft/Google shares today will probably be less expensive tomorrow

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    May 12, 2022 at 10:14 am

    What was it Shakespeare said about lawyers… (*)

    John Eastman Pressed Pennsylvania Legislator to Throw Out Biden Votes

    NY Times – May 11

    (photo of John Eastman haranguing from the podium on Jan 6, next to beaming Rudy Giuliani.)

    The lawyer argued that mail ballots in Pennsylvania in the 2020 election could be culled in a way that would reverse President Donald J. Trump’s defeat in an electorally critical state. 

    Even by the standards of other ideas promoted by the conservative lawyer John Eastman to keep President Donald J. Trump in the White House after his election loss in 2020, a newly revealed strategy he proposed to take votes from Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Pennsylvania stands out as especially brazen.

    Mr. Eastman pressed a Pennsylvania state lawmaker in December 2020 to carry out a plan to strip Mr. Biden of his win in that state by applying a mathematical equation to accepting the validity of mail ballots, which were most heavily used by Democrats during the pandemic, according to emails from Mr. Eastman released under a public records request by the University of Colorado Boulder, which employed him at the time.

    The emails were the latest evidence of just how far Mr. Trump and his allies were willing to go in the weeks after Election Day to keep him in power — complete with anti-democratic plans to install fake pro-Trump electors and reject the votes of Biden supporters. Mr. Eastman would go on to champion the idea that Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally block congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory, an idea Mr. Pence rejected even as Mr. Trump was promoting the protests that turned into the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. …

    * a line from William Shakespeare‘s Henry VI, Part 2, Act IV, Scene 2. The full quote is: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”. (Wikipedia)

  • Fred C. Dobbs says:
    May 12, 2022 at 4:44 pm

    More toothless subpoenas?

    Jan. 6 Panel Subpoenas 5 Republican Representatives

    NY Times – May 12

    The leaders of the House committee investigating the Capitol attack said they were demanding testimony from Kevin McCarthy of California and four of his colleagues. …

    … 

    The panel said it was demanding testimony from Mr. McCarthy, of California, who engaged in a heated phone call with President Donald J. Trump during the Capitol violence; Representative Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, who coordinated a plan to try to replace the acting attorney general after he resisted Mr. Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud; Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, who was deeply involved in the effort to fight the election results; Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, the former leader of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus; and Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama, who has said Mr. Trump has continued to seek an unlawful reinstatement to office for more than a year. …

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