RJS, Focus on Fracking, Largest one-week price jump on record leaves oil prices at a 13½ year high Oil prices increased for the tenth time in eleven weeks this week, and finished at a 13 1/2 year high, after a combination of sanctions, the threat of sanctions, and threats to shipping in the Black Sea […]
IT WAS BEDLAM! From The Decline of American Capitalism by Lewis Corey (1934): Capitalist production saves on labor and multiplies the productive forces. But two contradictions arise which constantly torment capitalist enterprise. Saving on labor decreases relative wages and limits the conditions of consumption. This sets in motion the forces of excess capacity, sharpened competition, and mounting […]
The current spike in gas prices is not sufficient to bring about a recession (at least, not yet!) [Well, I never got around to a COVID update last week. Since most States don’t report over the weekend, I am going to wait until tomorrow. But the bullet point hint is: it increasingly looks like Omicron […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for February 28 – March 4 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. There are two big stories dominating the data. The first is how inflation, and the anticipated Fed rate hike, are affecting interest rates. The second is the ramifications, particularly for commodities, […]
RJS, MarketWatch 666; January’s construction spending As usual, I estimate the impact of revisions to prior months on 4th quarter GDP, and the impact of the January report on 1st quarter GDP… Construction Spending Up 1.3% on Higher Costs in January after December and November Spending Was Revised Higher The Census Bureau’s report on January construction spending (pdf) […]
The Blindfolded Scaffolding Begins to Unfold We sense too little for the process of containment to unfold. Yet phenomenologists focus on early representations from the scaffolding for subsequent events in front of the now not-blindfolded infants. Infants looked at longer aspects of the psychoanalytic scaffolding: how reverie can be and is being a weird kind […]
Fascist Traditionalism And Putin’s Invasion Of Ukraine About a half-century ago I was urged by my oldest friend to read a book by Fritjof Schuon (1907-1998) written in 1953, The Transcendental Unity of Religions. The book’s title basically tells its message: that while each religion has its own exoteric forms that differ from those of each […]
Vladimir who daren’t dismount III. Estragon is french for sunflower. How in the hell, Samuel? These days, fossils are paying good money for carbon capture stories. More for the hacks. Lord knows we’ve them aplenty. The €13 billion-plus overruns Nord Stream in a time of global warming was silly. The commitment to fossils, sillier. Being […]
“March 5, 2022,” Letters from an American, Professor Heather Cox – Richardson Whenever something good is going down, there are nut jobs popping up making demeaning statements about what is occurring. Here is one of Trump’s acolytes taking a shot at Ukraine’s Zelensky’s courage. “Yesterday, Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) referred to the “Putin wing” of […]
February jobs report: a Big Win! There were two main trends I was looking for in this jobs report: 1. Is the pace of job growth beginning to decelerate? 2. Is wage growth holding up? Is it accelerating? The answers were: 1. The 6-month average of monthly gains, which was running at 548,000 in the 2nd […]