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

Car Build in the US

This is the latest article discussing US automotive manufacturing I could find right now. If I could find my old charts I would use to plan components, I could offer more up-to-date information. However, the US automotive industry builds millions of cars each year and accounted for 2.8% of all nonfarm jobs in the US […]

Real retail sales turn down in April, but continue to reflect consumers’ front-running of tariffs

 – by New Deal democrat Next up in today’s slew of data is retail sales. This is one of the most important indicators I look at, because it tells us so much about consumers, and since consumption leads employment, it gives us information about the trend in that as well. In April, nominally retail sales […]

Does Trump Get To Decide Who Is An American?

– by Joyce Vance @ Civil Discourse The stakes are high, even though the Supreme Court won’t be deciding, at least not yet, whether Trump’s order to end birthright citizenship is constitutional. Tomorrow (written on May 14), the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the Birthright Citizenship Case, Trump v. Casa, Inc. We’re here because Donald […]

Jobless Claims May 15 2025

Jobless claims: more of the same  – by New Deal democrat After a long data drought, there are many releases today. I’ll start with jobless claims. Initial claims were unchanged at 229,000, while the four week moving average rose 2,250 to 230,500. With the typical one week delay, continuing claims rose 9,000 to 1.881 million: […]

“it would grant citizenship to the children of those who “owe [the U.S.] no allegiance”

The Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the Birthright Citizenship Case, Trump v. Casa, Inc. May 15, 2025. Some history and argument . . . The arguments are not new. The willingness of an Administration to act on them are Jonathan H. Adler During the first Trump Administration, some of the President’s supporters urged him to […]

Average and aggregate nonsupervisory real April wages continued to fuel the consumer

 – by New Deal democrat Now that we have April’s consumer inflation data, let’s update real wages for average American families. In April average hourly wages for nonsupervisory employees increased 0.3%, and aggregate payrolls for nonsupervisory employees increased 0.4%. Since CPI increased 0.2%, in real terms wages (light blue) increased 0.1% and aggregate payrolls (dark blue) […]

The FED and Inflation

I do not believe there is any policy which will be successful when the environment changes like the direction of the wind due to kneejerk reactions of the presidency. Inflation did decrease by one tenth of one percent. But then is 2.3 or 2.4% really high? What has had a greater impact on the economy […]

New vaccines and placebo controls

I was a subject in the Moderna Phase III trial for the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. It was a placebo-controlled trial: of the 30,000 people enrolled, half received the vaccine and half got the saline control. I ended up breaking the blind by having myself tested independently. I was positive for spike protein antibody, which was […]

Who is Scott Bessent?

Well, he’s Secretary of the Treasury under Trump. But what about the man, not the title? “Bessent, according to an interview in the Yale Alumni Magazine in 2015, never imagined he’d be able to get married as a gay man, and have children via surrogacy. It’s a comment that is quite jarring considering that, a […]