Killing Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis Most of the attention in this recent attack by a US drone at the Baghdad Airport has been on it killing Iranian Quds Force commander, Qasim (Qassem) Solmaini (Suleimani), supposedly plotting an “imminent” attack on Americans as he flew a commercial airliner to Iraq at the invitation of its government and […]
Initial jobless claims still negative, but no recession signal As you know, I’ve been monitoring initial jobless claims closely for the past several months, to see if there are any signs of a slowdown turning into something worse. Simply put, if businesses aren’t laying employees off, those same people are consumers who are going to […]
Forward Creeping Excessmass Wins The War On Christmas “Excessmass” is a term neologized in a column in the late 1990s in the Wall Street Journal (sorry, unable to find precise date) by my JMU colleague, Bill Wood. A devout Brethren, he was and remains disgusted by the crass commercialism associated with the Christmas holiday in […]
The chart of the decade Today doesn’t just mark the end of 2019, but the end of the 2010’s as well. So it’s only suitable that I post the one chart that I think most explains the economy over the past 10 years. In terms of public policy, that chart would be of the continual […]
Thiessen Balances His Policy Defense Of Trump Several days ago I posted on Marc A. Thiessen’s defense of 10 policies by Trump in WaPo. I must now credit him with today on New Year’s Eve in the same venue publishing a column “The 10 worst things Trump did in 2019.” Good for him, some balance […]
To steal from Sandwichman’s excellent commentary on 2020 Hindsight and use a quotation from it which does give the magnitude of the last 10 years in financial terms; “A fourth wave of debt began in 2010 and debt has reached $55 trillion in 2018, making it the largest, broadest and fastest growing of the four” […]
According to a report, Global Waves of Debt, pre-published by the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development: Waves of debt accumulation have been a recurrent feature of the global economy over the past fifty years. In emerging and developing countries, there have been four major debt waves since 1970. The first three waves ended in […]
A response to Kevin Drum: for wages and inflation, it’s all about the price of gas Last week Kevin Drum had the following inquiry: [H]ow is it that wages can go up but overall inflation remains so subdued? That seems to be the real disconnect here. During the dotcom boom, wages went up but inflation remained […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for December 23 – 27 at Seeking Alpha My last Weekly Indicators post of the year is up at Seeking Alpha. The producer side of the economy seems to be worsening, while initial jobless claims suggest some weakness is spreading over to the consumer side. As usual, clicking over and […]
by New Deal democrat Marking my 2019 forecast to market One of the things I do at the end of every year, in the interest of transparency, is to go back and see how my 6 and 12 month forecasts for the year panned out. So how did I do this year? Not perfect, but […]