Real retail sales declined in November, but continue to auger well for strong jobs growth, New Deal Democrat Retail sales, one of my favorite “real” economic indicators, were reported this morning for November. They increased 0.3% for the month, and October’s blockbuster report was revised 0.1% higher, to +1.8%. After inflation, though, “real” retail sales declined […]
Whole Lotka Shakin’ Goin’ On In a 1967 festschrift for Maurice Dobb, Richard Goodwin published an influential paper, “A Growth Cycle” on the “class struggle” model of cycles in economic growth. I only became aware of this famous paper because it had occurred to me that the dynamics of relative surplus population, necessary labour time, […]
—We study history in order to better understand what is going on now, to be better able to look into the future. — The Great Depression was a manifestation of the utter and complete failure of capitalism. Social Security, unemployment, and Welfare were implicit admissions of this failure. Capitalism had spectacularly failed to provide for […]
by New Deal democrat The state of the American consumer Yesterday I updated my alternative “consumer nowcast” fundamentals-based model of the economy, which serves as a check on my other models, and posted it over at Seeking Alpha. Hard to believe that I first wrote up that model over 15 years ago way back when I […]
Production, layoffs, housing hit the positive trifecta in November, New Deal democrat We got a blizzard of November and December data this morning across all three – coincident, short leading, and long leading – timeframes: industrial production, jobless claims, and housing permits and starts. All three were positive. Let’s start with the King of Coincident […]
At 7:20 minutes, you get to hear Cancun Ted talk about the crisis supposedly created by Democrats. “In a time of Crisis, character is revealed. On the Democratic side, we have seen Democratic politicians are authoritarian. They will control your life. They will order you to obey and they will destroy you if you don’t. […]
I am mainly linking to this fairly important article by Dan Diamond in The Washington Post. Diamond quotes many people arguing that the US really should do more to get everyone in the world who is willing to take the vaccine vaccinated. I am going to move on quickly to how this could be done, […]
Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) responds to Senator Ron Johnson’s telling people to gargle with mouthwash to kill Covid. Mr. Johnson: “Standard gargle, mouthwash, has been proven to kill the coronavirus (according to an audio recording of his remarks). If you get it, you may reduce viral replication. Why not try all these things?” Why not? […]
Oil rebounds on Omicron optimism; SPR at another 18 1/2 year low as sales to Asian refiners begin, Focus of Fracking, RJS Not really much news this week; gasoline & distillate inventories continue to rebound from the lows, no big moves on prices or much else; the headline is almost contrived . . . the […]
Disposable time as a common-pool resource IX — Disposable time as a model for environmental governance Not only could disposable time be regarded as a common-pool resource similar to other common-pool resources, but it could stand as the single most far-reaching and democratically vital model of a common-pool resource. Donald Stabile alluded to something in […]