Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

At Ford, AI wasn’t ready for prime time

Ford increasingly relied on AI-driven inspection systems to streamline production and address quality control issues. How’d that work out? “Ford has admitted to rehiring hundreds of human workers after its aggressive AI adoption strategy backfired. “The US automaker hired over 350 veteran engineers, referred to internally as “gray beards”, over the past three years in […]

New Deal democrat’s Weekly Indicators: Simply Stellar Consumer Spending June 21 -June 27

Unsurprisingly, the most significant high frequency indicator of the week was the 10% YoY increase in consumer spending as measured by Redbook. Despite all of the chaos and own-goals emanating out of Washington, the economy is incredibly resilient. II continue to worry that nearly the only driving force is what looks like a Bubble in […]

Costs of a Needless War Has an Economic Impact on Citizens

“Trump’s war in Iran has wiped out 1.5 years of wage growth,” Economic Policy Institute The Trump administration’s decision to start a war with Iran has imposed disastrous costs (both economic and humanitarian) around the world. The U.S. has been insulated from these costs more so than most other countries. Yet, even here the costs […]

Real personal spending on durable goods rebounds from near recessionary levels, including motor vehicle purchases

 – by New Deal democrat Yesterday we saw a slew of data releases, including durable and core capital goods orders, jobless claims, personal income and spending, and motor vehicle sales. I reported on all but personal spending and motor vehicle sales yesterday. Today let’s take a look at the last two. Let me start with the […]

Jobless claims: seasonality returns, but remains very positive for the economy

 – by New Deal democrat This morning a plethora of economic data was released, including personal spending and income, manuacturers’ new orders, motor vehicle sales, and jobless claims. Since tomorrow sees no significant data releases, I’m going to hold the in-depth look at spending and motor vehicle sales until tomorrow, and update the other releases today. […]

Roundup Wins in SCOTUS

Its good to be Monsanto! If you do not recall, I had written about the Monsanto issues years ago. Can’t find that post. In a nutshell, the “active ingredient is glyphosate. Mainly, it’s linked to carcinogenicity and the ability to cause cancer and specifically non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Unless, you go out in the field gress in […]

Real personal income in May was recessionary (again); depleting savings (temporarily?) “saves” the day

– by New Deal democrat The third item from this morning’s torrent of economic data I want to address is personal income and saving. I’ll update the spending side tomorrow, including an updated look at motor vehicle sales, which were also released this morning. On a nominal basis, personal income rose 0.7% in May, as […]

Increasing Black men’s educational attainment and other hard skills are likely to be helpful . . .

but they will not solve the problem. The cause of the low employment rate is not due to a lack of hard skills. A good piece examining the difference in employment between Black men, Hispanic men, etc, and white men. Even with an equivalent education as others, Black men employment is less than other groups. […]