A history lesson of what not to do and yet may still come to pass. October 5th, 2024 by Prof. Heather Cox – Richardson Letters from an American More politics rather than economics. Some of it does fit. The concept is political for an upcoming election. William McKinley is having a moment (which I confess […]
From Prof. Timothy Snyder’s substack “Thinking about…” Shared with permission: “Think about the politicians Trump idolizes, Vladimir Putin in Russia and Viktor Orbán in Hungary. The first undid a democracy through fake emergencies, the second through persistent constitutional abuse. It is not hard to see why Trump likes them. “Now consider the Russian and Hungarian […]
One of the biggest issues in the US is who lives in poverty and how it is determined. People get upset when there are people living on food stamps. Unfortunately, many of us do not know how the government does determine poverty. Part of what makes the conversation difficult is that the modern household budget […]
Partisan Divide? Per the poll discussed below, only 48 percent of Trump supporters got raises while 72 percent of Biden supporters got raises. 27 percent of Trump supporters had changed jobs while 43 percent of Biden supporters had changed. Data and Reporting Again today Paul Krugman said “the average worker’s purchasing power is higher than it was […]
– by New Deal democrat Recently I have paid much more attention to the ISM services index. That’s because, since the turn of the Millennium, manufacturing’s share of the economy has contracted to the point where even a significant decline in that index has not translated into an economy-wide recession, as for example in 2015-16. When we […]
– by New Deal democrat Especially in view of the relative weakness in the jobs report for the past few months, my focus continues to be on whether jobs gains are most consistent with a “soft landing,” i.e., no further deterioration, or whether there is further decline towards a recession. For this month at least, the […]
Running on Empty tonight. VA sent me a letter asking for all the information I believe was already sent to them. Some I have found rather quickly by exploring U of M records. Platelet counts for certain periods when they just almost disappeared. I need to talk to them tomorrow and see what the issue […]
– by New Deal democrat Initial jobless claims will be up against some very challenging comparisons for the next 6 months or so, due to some unresolved post-COVID seasonality. Which means that the headline numbers this week, which look very benign at the surface, are not quite so good as they have been for the […]
Somewhere, there is a correlation between the two . . . The Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico dockworker strikes are over. The strike by tens of thousands of dockworkers on the East and Gulf coasts has been called off, after the International Longshoremen’s Association and the U.S. Maritime Alliance, representing ocean carriers and port […]
– by New Deal democrat I wanted to follow up on a point I made yesterday: although manufacturing is no longer a big enough slice of the US economy to bring about an economic downturn on its own – unless for some reason the manufacturing downturn were unusually severe – when it is paired with […]