Trump’s trade war isn’t hurting manufacturing . . . yet The Trump Administration’s trade war hasn’t hurt manufacturing and production yet. At least that’s the message from this morning’s ISM report on manufacturing. According to the ISM: The September PMI®registered 59.8 percent, a decrease of 1.5 percentage points from the August reading of 61.3 percent. […]
2018 Arctic sea ice minimum As I may possibly have mentioned once or twice before, I am a total nerd. One of the web sites I watch is NSIDC’s site tracking arctic sea ice. To be honest, I’m a little surprised that it is still functioning, since the Trump Administration believes that climate change is […]
I Was Wrong: US-Mexico Trade Deal Lives With Canada: USMCA Rather Than NAFTA At the last minute last night the US and Canada cut a deal, so now Canada is on on the deal to change NAFTA to USMCA. I think the name change is the biggest part of it, even though Trump still claims […]
Housing: comprehensive review of August reports – by New Deal democratI pay particular attention to housing because it is ian important long leading indicator for the economy. And more and more evidence is accumulating — although it is not universal — that housing may have passed its peak in this cycle. Last year housing was resued […]
The *rate* of new jobless claims, at all-time lows, forecasts even lower unemployment I thought I’d start out with something I haven’t looked at in awhile: initial jobless claims as a share of the population and as a leading indicator for the unemployment rate. This economic expansion has featured two contrary extremes in the labor […]
The US-Mexico Trade Deal Dies Nobody is calling it that, but the low key story on the back pages of Wednessday’s major papers report that this is what has happened, not to my surprise. September 29 (or maybe the 30th at a stretch) is the deadline for President Trump to submit to the Congress the […]
A Few Thoughts on “Sorry to Bother You” I saw this film several weeks ago and have been meaning to say a few things about it. Herewith: 1. This is an exceptionally intelligent movie by American standards. It maintains a high level of wit and observation from beginning to end, and little zingers flash by […]
Citizens United, Thoroughly Debunked I admit I haven’t paid too much attention to debates over Citizens United, since I regard the direction taken by regulation, control over who may contribute to political campaigns and how much they can put up, to be misguided. I would like to see comprehensive control over how much money can […]
Is the Ecological Salvation of the Human Species at Hand? In “De-growth vs a Green New Deal,” Robert Pollin relies on the same blurring of distinctions that Robert Solow employed 46 years earlier in his condemnation of The Limits to Growth as “bad science.” Nicholaus Georgescu-Roegen pointed out Solow’s obfuscation in the article that inspired the term […]
Mainstream Media Says Trump Triumphs Over Iran! That would be several stories in both the New York Times and the Washington Post over the last two days: Trump’s policy against Iran is a great success and it is completely reasonable and justified. This reporting and columnizing has followed three tracks. One was in a column […]