The takeaway in this short report about firearm violence is “Black and Hispanic children were more likely to witness or be shot. Black children were 100 times, and Hispanic children 25 times, more likely than White children to be shot in Chicago and other major US cities. They are at greater risk of being shot […]

 – by New Deal democrat Even before the new Administration took office in Washington, my focus had been on whether the economy would have a “soft” or “hard” landing, i.e., recession. That has only intensified by the utter chaos of tariff-palooza! So my focus now is looking for “hard” vs.”soft” data indicating its impact. This month’s […]

Open Thread for Talk. You can talk about tipping waiters or you may choose a different topic. Initial topic is “tipping waiters.” When we go to dinner, we expect good service and usually get it. A good waiter is typically checking on the restaurant guests and being attentive to their needs. The exchange should be […]

by Sandwichman EconoSpeak Back in December, 2024, The Wall Street Journal carried a feature on an economics preprint research article that showed surprising findings. David Autor and Daron Acemoglu lauded the preprint. “It’s fantastic,” said Acemoglu. “I was floored,” said Autor. The two economists appeared in a photo flanking the author, Aidan Toner-Rodgers. Turns out Autor was right. The […]

 – by New Deal democrat Last month I concluded my report on the economically weighted ISM manufacturing and services indexes by writing “new orders for the entire economy are tight on the cusp of tipping into contraction.” This month, they did, warranting a “Recession Watch.” To recap, because manufacturing is much less important to the economy […]

Asia is a world apart from Europe or North America. I am curious as to what people are thinking about in Asia when they view the news from either country. I have traveled extensively in Thailand and China as well as Europe. Much of the time, I was there for weeks. There are always questions […]

This is one of those issues where one side supports an ideal even if there is harm to the other side. My choice would be to warn those who may confess to something they did. The other side of this? If unknown and happening, who is to blame if nothing s done? ~~~~~~~ Priests to […]

 – by New Deal democrat We finish the month of May with the very important personal income and spending for April, which gives us a thorough look at the consumer. In this case it is particularly complicated by the fact that “Liberation Day” tariffs and various further retaliatory increases were imposed at various times during the […]

 – by New Deal democrat Let me start this post by picking up where I left off yesterday. In yesterday’s post I suggested that an absolute YoY decline in intermodal rail freight might well show up in this morning’s report from the AAR. And as the below chart shows, that’s exactly what happened, with intermodal traffic […]

I did a deeper investigation to get to the source of the reported loss on numerous Starlink satellites launched by Elon Musk. As reported on 3 February 2022, SpaceX launched 49 Starlink satellites, 38 of which unexpectedly deorbited. The deorbiting of the satellites was blamed on space weather. A bit of explanation on Space weather: […]