The American economy is showing clear signs of slowing down, fueling concerns about a potential recession.
The Federal Reserve is raising interest rates in an effort to slow growth as it seeks to curb persistently high inflation as well as consumer prices that are rising at their fastest pace in more than 40 years.
The job market remains healthy, but consumer spending, which drives the bulk of economic activity in the United States, is losing steam. …
2. Consumer confidence: In June, the University of Michigan’s survey of consumer sentiment hit its lowest level in its 70-year history, with nearly half of respondents saying inflation is eroding their standard of living.
3. The housing market: Demand for real estate has decreased, and construction of new homes is slowing. These trends could continue as interest rates rise, and real estate companies, including Compass and Redfin, have laid off employees in anticipation of a downturn in the housing market.
4. Start-up funding: Investments in start-ups have declined to their lowest level since 2019, dropping 23 percent over the last three months, to $62.3 billion.
5. The stock market: The S&P 500 had its worst first half of a year since 1970, and it is down nearly 19 percent since January. Every sector of the index beyond energy is down from the beginning of the year.
6. Copper: Seen by analysts as a measure of sentiment about the global economy — because of its widespread use in buildings, cars and other products — copper is down over 20 percent since January, hitting a 17-month low on July 1.
7. Oil: Crude prices are up this year, in part because of supply constraints resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but they have recently started to waver as investors worry about growth. The price of Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, dipped below $100 a barrel Wednesday for the first time since late April.
8. The bond market: Long-term interest rates in government bonds have fallen below short-term rates, an unusual occurrence that traders call a yield-curve inversion. It suggests that bond investors are expecting an economic slowdown.
After more than two years of outsize employment growth following the biggest shock to the labor market on record, job creation most likely slowed markedly in June and will probably do so further in the second half of the year, forecasters say.
Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect the Labor Department’s monthly report on Friday to show that employers added 268,000 jobs in June — a figure that is significantly below the average of 545,000 additional jobs each month over the past year, and one that is only slightly above what was reported in April 2021, the slowest month for job growth since President Biden took office.
The U.S. economy has nearly regained the 22 million jobs that it lost in the initial stages of the pandemic in 2020, but every incremental move forward has become more difficult.
That’s the result of two forces: Fewer workers are available or willing to take open jobs, and demand is slowing as higher interest rates, imposed by the Federal Reserve to combat inflation, take their toll. …
… A smaller number may not be cause for concern. The number of people quitting their jobs remained at near-record highs in May, the Labor Department reported this week, in a sign that workers are still confident they can find other jobs. The 11.3 million openings cited in that report suggest they’re right.
But consumer spending, which fuels most American economic activity, has drifted lower in recent months as high prices for food and groceries have cut into disposable income and weakened demand for durable goods like cars and appliances. That is likely to start affecting manufacturing employment, which a closely watched industry survey this week showed was decelerating.
Small businesses are in a particularly dark mood, the National Federation of Independent Business reported last month in its long-running survey, although they are still citing the difficulty of finding qualified workers as a top concern.
Economists also expect the report on Friday to show that wages didn’t rise as much in June as in previous months, which would put the average American worker even further behind rising prices and prompt a tighter hold on wallets.
Whatcha gonna do about it, Joe?Several states, not content to just outlaw abortion within their borders, are pursuing laws to criminalize crossing state lines to obtain an abortion. Colorado’s governor just signed an executive order blocking state agencies from cooperating in any fashion with such laws (except for a court order). Connecticut previously passed a law with the same effect.Free and open state borders and federal regulation of interstate commerce are enshrined explicitly in the Constitution. Biden should issue an executive order asserting the federal nullification of state laws that encroach on interstate travel for reproductive health care. Let the states sue up to the SCOTUS.Are these laws attempting to nationalize state laws unconstitutional? As we’ve seen, (1) the Constitution means exactly what the Supreme Court says it means, and (2) the Roberts Court is capable of a breathtaking versatility of conviction in order to assert its right-wing agenda.It’s time for Biden to stand up for America.
The commerce clause has been held by the court to not apply to insurance or healthcare. That’s why Roberts use the power to tax to uphold the Affordable Care Act.
… Millions of Americans gained health insurance coverage as a result of the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s landmark law passed in 2010 and reshaped virtually every corner of American healthcare. The latest challenge threatened to undo coverage gains under the law that helped drive down the uninsured rate to a record low.
Proponents feared the law was in greater jeopardy following the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, part of the court’s liberal wing, which shrunk to just three of a total of nine justices without her.
Those fears now seem to be overblown. Chief Justice John Roberts joined the courts liberals in upholding the law, as did two of President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court picks, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. …
The draft plan, which is expected to be unveiled in the coming days, is part of talks over how to salvage pieces of President Biden’s domestic agenda.
Senate Democrats will push to raise taxes on some high-earning Americans and steer the money to improving the solvency of Medicare, according to officials briefed on the plan, as they cobble together a modest version of President Biden’s stalled tax and spending package.
The proposal is projected to raise $203 billion over a decade by imposing an additional 3.8 percent tax on income earned from owning a piece of what is known as a pass-through business, such as a law firm or medical practice. The money that would be generated by the change is estimated to be enough to extend the solvency of the Medicare trust fund that pays for hospital care — currently set to begin running out of money in 2028 — until 2031.
It is the most recent agreement to emerge from private negotiations between Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, and Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a conservative-leaning Democrat who has demanded that his party rein in its sweeping ambitions for a domestic policy plan. In December, Mr. Manchin torpedoed efforts to pass Mr. Biden’s $2.2 trillion social safety net, climate and tax package because of concerns over its cost and impact on the economy at a time of rising inflation. …
… The Democrats’ plan would extend an existing 3.8 percent net investment income tax to so-called pass-through income, earned from businesses that distribute profits to their owners. Many people who work at such firms — such as law partners and hedge fund managers — earn high incomes, but avoid the 3.8 percent tax on the bulk of it.
The new proposal would apply only to people earning more than $400,000 a year, and joint filers, trusts and estates bringing in more than $500,000, in accordance with Mr. Biden’s pledge that he would not raise taxes for people who make less than $400,000 a year. The proposal is similar to a tax increase Mr. Biden proposed in 2021 to help offset the cost of a set of new spending programs meant to help workers and families, like home health care and child care. …
Representative Debbie Lesko, a Republican from Arizona, sparked confusion after she appeared to assert she would shoot her own grandchildren“to protect” them in a speech on the House floor on Tuesday.
In a widely circulated clip of her remarks expressing opposition to a gun safety bill, Lesko said she would go to any length necessary to defend her grandchildren, including “shooting them.”
“I would do anything, anything to protect my five grandchildren, including as a last resort shooting them if I had to, to protect the lives of my grandchildren,” she said.
She then went on to criticize the legislation and broader efforts to enact stronger gun reform measures introduced in the wake of recent mass shootings in Buffalo, NY, in Uvalde, Tex., and at a Fourth of July parade in a Chicago suburb that has claimed seven lives. …
The bill Lesko was speaking against would establish a national so-called red flag law, meaning procedures for federal courts would be put in place to remove guns from those deemed to be a risk to themselves or others.
“Democrat bills that we’ve heard this week want to take away my right, my right to protect my grandchildren,” she said. “They want to take away the rights of law-abiding citizens to protect their own children and grandchildren and wives and brothers and sisters.” …
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
…The term comes from journalist Michael Kinsley, who said, “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.”[5][6]…
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
To be entirely fair, then Debbie Lesko probably just meant that she would be willing to shoot some liberal’s grandchildren in order to protect her own grandchildren, but in a trigger happy moment lost sight of her target.
A small inconvenience that should be a constant practice with all 6 of these cretins. If I still lived in DC I know what I would be doing with my retirement.
“Protestors held a demonstration outside a Washington D.C. restaurant after getting word that Brett Kavanaugh was inside, forcing the Supreme Court justice to depart from a back door, Politico reported.
Kavanaugh, who was among the justices who supported the recent Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, was having dinner Wednesday night Morton’s, a steak house.”
Maybe the Morton’s in DC is better than the one that closed down here in RVA. My wife and I were given a gift certificate for it and ate there once. I can only describe it as expensive and tasteless. We gave the balance of our $100 gift to the waiter, which was over $30 since neither of us drank.
The conflict’s long-run trajectory seems increasingly likely to be shaped by whether the United States and its allies can maintain their military, political and financial commitments to holding off Russia.
More than four months after Russia invaded Ukraine, a war that was expected to be a Russian blitzkrieg only to turn into a debacle for Moscow has now evolved into a battle of inches with no end in sight, a geopolitical stamina contest in which President Vladimir V. Putin is gambling that he can outlast a fickle, impatient West.
President Biden has vowed to stand with Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” but neither he nor anyone else can say how long that will be or how much more the United States and its allies can do over that distance, short of direct military intervention. At some point, officials acknowledge, U.S. and European stocks of weapons will run low; while the United States has authorized $54 billion in military and other assistance, no one expects another $54 billion check when that runs out. …
So Mr. Biden and his team are searching for a long-term strategy at a time when the White House sees the dangers of escalation increasing, the prospect for a negotiated settlement still far-off and public weariness beginning to set in at home and abroad.
“I worry about the fatigue factor of the public in a wide range of countries because of the economic costs and because there are other pressing concerns,” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware and a close ally of Mr. Biden’s who attended the NATO summit meeting in Madrid last week.
“I think we need to be determined and continue to support Ukraine,” said Mr. Coons, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “Exactly how long this will go, exactly what the trajectory will be, we don’t know right now. But we know if we don’t continue to support Ukraine, the outcome for the U.S. will be much worse.”
While the fighting lately has focused mainly on a crescent in eastern and southern Ukraine, the White House worries it could easily spiral out of control. A recent missile strike on a shopping center in central Ukraine suggested that Moscow was running low on precision weaponry and increasingly turning to less sophisticated armaments that could hit unintended targets — potentially even across the border, in NATO allies like Poland or Romania. And American officials worry that Mr. Putin may resort to tactical nuclear weapons to break out of the box he faces on the battlefield.
Indeed, the Biden administration has concluded that the Russian leader still wants to widen the war and try again to seize Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. “We think he has effectively the same political goals that we had previously, which is to say that he wants to take most of Ukraine,” Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, said at a conference last week. …
Mr. Putin almost seemed to confirm that on Thursday, when he warned that he had more expansive options available. “Everybody should know that, largely speaking, we haven’t even yet started anything in earnest,” he told parliamentary leaders in Moscow.
“We are hearing that they want to defeat us on the battlefield,” Mr. Putin added. “Let them try.”
U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss strategy deliberations, are urging the Ukrainians to consolidate their forces at the front. But Ukraine’s leaders want to go further and mass enough personnel to mount a counteroffensive to retake territory, a goal that American officials support in theory even if they are dubious about the Ukrainians’ capacity to dislodge the Russians. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine told Group of 7 leaders last week that he wanted the war over by the end of the year. But there are serious doubts in Washington about whether that is possible militarily. …
In 1939, Germany under Hitler invaded & conquered Poland, after previously annexing Austria and a portion of Czechoslovakia. Britain and France declared war on Germany and WW2 was on. The US joined the fray two years later.
Now the western world is in a similar situation with respect to Russia under Putin, Russia having invaded Ukraine, after having granted that country independent status only a few years ago. Although there are ancient cultural ties, the NATO nations of Europe (and the US) have objected strenuously and all but gone to war with Russia over this.
One must wonder if what’s next is to admit that WW3 is now under way.
Not entirely unlike the period before Germany invaded & conquered France & the Low Countries in 1940.
The Phoney War (French: Drôle de guerre; German: Sitzkrieg) was an eight-month period at the start of World War II, during which there was only one limited military land operation on the Western Front, when French troops invaded Germany‘s Saar district. Nazi Germany carried out the Invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939; the Phoney period began with the declaration of war by the United Kingdom and France against Nazi Germany on 3 September 1939, after which little actual warfare occurred, and ended with the German invasion of France and the Low Countries on 10 May 1940. Although there was no large-scale military action by Britain and France, they did begin some economic warfare, especially with the naval blockade, and shut down German surface raiders. … (Wikipedia)
“World War III has been declared,” Pope Francis said in a wide-ranging conversation with the editors of European Jesuit publications on May 19, referring to Russia’s attack against Ukraine. The conversation was published by the Italian Jesuit publication La Civiltà Cattolica and the secular newspaper La Stampa on June 14 and is sure to spark discussion.
Francis spoke about the complex background to the war in Ukraine and the interests involved, including those of arms manufacturers. He denounced “the brutality and ferocity” of the Russian troops and praised the heroism and courage of the Ukrainians. …
“For me, today, World War III has been declared. This is something that should give us pause for thought. What is happening to humanity that we have had three world wars in a century?”
Leery of a national draft for the Ukraine war, the Kremlin is offering cash bonuses and employing strong arm tactics.
…
To make up the manpower shortfall, the Kremlin is relying on a combination of impoverished ethnic minorities, Ukrainians from the separatist territories, mercenaries and militarized National Guard units to fight the war, and promising hefty cash incentives for volunteers.
… Yet, President Vladimir V. Putin hobbled the mobilization effort from the beginning, experts said, by refusing to put Russia on a war footing that would have allowed the military to start calling up reserves. Hence, the Kremlin has tried to glue together replacement battalions through other means.
Avoiding a draft for all adult males allows the Kremlin to maintain the fiction that the war is a limited “special military operation,” while also minimizing the risk of the kind of public backlash that spurred the end of previous Russian military debacles, like the one in Afghanistan and the first Chechen war. …
In Argentina, a demagogue won the presidency by promising to restore past glory. Instead, he destroyed institutions, corrupted the Supreme Court, and left the country deeply polarized. Sound familiar?
… Comparing today’s United States with yesterday’s Argentina produces some uncomfortable parallels. Our political institutions are weakening. Congress is a pit of rancor where the public good seems lost amid scorching invective. The Supreme Court has become a partisan battleground. It is no wonder that public confidence in both Congress and the Supreme Court has plummeted. That is dangerous in any democracy. …
Measures that reflect a slowing US economy
NY Times – July 8
The American economy is showing clear signs of slowing down, fueling concerns about a potential recession.
The Federal Reserve is raising interest rates in an effort to slow growth as it seeks to curb persistently high inflation as well as consumer prices that are rising at their fastest pace in more than 40 years.
The job market remains healthy, but consumer spending, which drives the bulk of economic activity in the United States, is losing steam. …
The latest jobs report is expected to show slower growth
NY Times – July 8
Whatcha gonna do about it, Joe?Several states, not content to just outlaw abortion within their borders, are pursuing laws to criminalize crossing state lines to obtain an abortion. Colorado’s governor just signed an executive order blocking state agencies from cooperating in any fashion with such laws (except for a court order). Connecticut previously passed a law with the same effect.Free and open state borders and federal regulation of interstate commerce are enshrined explicitly in the Constitution. Biden should issue an executive order asserting the federal nullification of state laws that encroach on interstate travel for reproductive health care. Let the states sue up to the SCOTUS.Are these laws attempting to nationalize state laws unconstitutional? As we’ve seen, (1) the Constitution means exactly what the Supreme Court says it means, and (2) the Roberts Court is capable of a breathtaking versatility of conviction in order to assert its right-wing agenda.It’s time for Biden to stand up for America.
The commerce clause has been held by the court to not apply to insurance or healthcare. That’s why Roberts use the power to tax to uphold the Affordable Care Act.
Supreme Court Upholds Health Care Law in 5-4 Decision
A little over a year ago…
Supreme Court upholds ACA in 7-2 decision, leaving intact landmark US health law during pandemic
MAGA redux! Checkpoints at state-border crossings! Yeah, baby!
In other news…
Democrats Propose Raising Taxes on Some High Earners to Bolster Medicare
NY Times – July 7
Oh, Arizona!
Arizona congresswoman says she would shoot her grandchildren to ‘protect’ them
Boston Globe – July 7
Fred,
Lesko’s gaffe reminds me of ol’ Michael Kinsley’s description of political gaffes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_gaffe
…The term comes from journalist Michael Kinsley, who said, “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.”[5][6]…
To be entirely fair, then Debbie Lesko probably just meant that she would be willing to shoot some liberal’s grandchildren in order to protect her own grandchildren, but in a trigger happy moment lost sight of her target.
Along the lines of that infamous Vietnam War quote
‘Sometimes you have to destroy a village in order to save it.’
A small inconvenience that should be a constant practice with all 6 of these cretins. If I still lived in DC I know what I would be doing with my retirement.
“Protestors held a demonstration outside a Washington D.C. restaurant after getting word that Brett Kavanaugh was inside, forcing the Supreme Court justice to depart from a back door, Politico reported.
Kavanaugh, who was among the justices who supported the recent Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, was having dinner Wednesday night Morton’s, a steak house.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/brett-kavanaugh-forced-dc-restaurant-by-protest-after-roe-overturn-2022-7
Maybe the Morton’s in DC is better than the one that closed down here in RVA. My wife and I were given a gift certificate for it and ate there once. I can only describe it as expensive and tasteless. We gave the balance of our $100 gift to the waiter, which was over $30 since neither of us drank.
Morton’s permanently closes Shockoe steakhouse
Ukraine and the Contest of Global Stamina
NY Times – July 9
In 1939, Germany under Hitler invaded & conquered Poland, after previously annexing Austria and a portion of Czechoslovakia. Britain and France declared war on Germany and WW2 was on. The US joined the fray two years later.
Now the western world is in a similar situation with respect to Russia under Putin, Russia having invaded Ukraine, after having granted that country independent status only a few years ago. Although there are ancient cultural ties, the NATO nations of Europe (and the US) have objected strenuously and all but gone to war with Russia over this.
One must wonder if what’s next is to admit that WW3 is now under way.
Not entirely unlike the period before Germany invaded & conquered France & the Low Countries in 1940.
The Phoney War (French: Drôle de guerre; German: Sitzkrieg) was an eight-month period at the start of World War II, during which there was only one limited military land operation on the Western Front, when French troops invaded Germany‘s Saar district. Nazi Germany carried out the Invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939; the Phoney period began with the declaration of war by the United Kingdom and France against Nazi Germany on 3 September 1939, after which little actual warfare occurred, and ended with the German invasion of France and the Low Countries on 10 May 1940. Although there was no large-scale military action by Britain and France, they did begin some economic warfare, especially with the naval blockade, and shut down German surface raiders. … (Wikipedia)
Not quite 2 months ago…
Pope Francis: ‘World War III has been declared.’
Desperate for Recruits, Russia Launches a ‘Stealth Mobilization’
NY Times – July 10
Avoiding a draft for all adult males allows the Kremlin to maintain the fiction that the war is a limited “special military operation,” while also minimizing the risk of the kind of public backlash that spurred the end of previous Russian military debacles, like the one in Afghanistan and the first Chechen war. …
Yes, there is such a thing as a formerly developed country
Boston Globe – July 5