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

EV proliferation

Teslas are pretty popular here in Rhode Island. While that appears virtuous, it’s important to recall that 95% of Rhode Island electricity comes from natural gas, so those Teslas are running on fossil fuel. EVs are proliferating all over the planet: “Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Car News China reports that in the first half […]

Trump’s Economy Redux

My little post on the warnings by Paul Krugman and others that the US economy might be entering a period of stagflation, was prompted by my experience as young man who finished his education, started in his career and got married in the 1970’s when “stagflation” was the buzz word and politicians kept pointing fingers […]

Shelter, tariffs, and “just-so” inflation indexes

 – by New Deal democrat In my note yesterday about the July CPI, I noted the transition from the trend where overall inflation ex-shelter was low, and shelter was high but disinflating, to a trend where inflation ex-shelter while still low was increasing, as shelter contributed the most to disinflation. The question was, and will be […]

The consumer inflation transition continues, as shelter prices decelerate further, and other sectors show some re-acceleration

 – by New Deal democrat The story of this month’s CPI report is summed up in the first few graphs below: the shelter portion of the index continues its slow deceleration, while the non-shelter portion of the index appears to be in a slowly rising trend. This has resulted in headline inflation trending ever so […]

Kodak RIP

Kodak was ubiquitous when I was growing up. While I never owned a Kodak camera, I purchased miles of Kodak film, both color and black-and-white, as well as developing chemicals and printing paper. When Fujichrome first appeared, I tried it, but the pictures always turned out with a green-blue cast. Kodachrome and Ektachrome ruled. The […]

Brief Stock Market Update for August 8

This is another way to look at the market similar t what New Deal democrat does in his daily reports. Typically this only goes to customers of an investment firm I have my retirement funds with at this time. For those concerned about a c&p, the firm suggests we pass this report along to our […]

Trump vs Krugman

Apparently, the guy who bankrupted casinos has called economics Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman a “deranged bum.” LOL! Trump is pissed at Krugman for criticizing Trump’s tariff policy and firing of the BLS person. “Claiming that economic data you don’t like is fraud perpetrated by a deep state conspiracy has been standard practice on the right […]

A decline in the immigrant labor force is not a valid reason for Wall Street’s optimism

 – by New Deal democrat Despite some very soft employment and production data in the past several weeks, Wall Street has been on something of a tear, making repeated new all-time highs. Over the weekend I saw the following comment, which piqued my interest: It certainly does seem that Wall Street is dismissing the news […]

AZ Tr__p Supporters Who Did Not Learn from the Last Time he was in Office

This is history and some whining also. But it it is worthwhile to look it over again. I read pieces like this and wonder. What the hell did you think Tr__p was going to do? Furthermore, what was wrong with Kamala Harris to cause you to vote for Tr__p? Tr__p has a history of lining […]

New Deal democrats Weekly Indicators for August 4 – 8

 – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. There is a strong divergence between the high frequency data, which is very positive, and the monthly data, which has caused me to go on “recession watch.” Needless to say, this is very unusual, suggesting there may be some special factors at work; […]