The last few weeks in Arizona, we have experienced higher than normal temperatures. Well, of course we are in Arizona, what would you expect? I am hearing from the longer term residents, about 10 degrees lower. It is not terribly hot. just unusual. I believe we face a greater danger from the building of more […]
Trump’s Never-ending War and Trump’s Never-ending Tariffs are pushing up Never-ending price increases “Why Consumers are F*cked” Robert Reich Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s admission yesterday that it “could be next year” before gas prices return to below $3-a-gallon is causing trauma in Republican circles because “next year” is after the November 3 midterm elections. Initially Trump said he could […]
Gallons of digital ink are spilled weekly about how AI will be a job-destroying juggernaut. But it’s far from clear that all jobs will be vulnerable and on what time scale the AI replacement will occur. “Who gets laid off first? Writers and editors are at the greatest risk, the report says — 57 percent […]
– by New Deal democrat Let’s take our weekly look at jobless claims, recently perhaps the most positive datapoint in the entire economy. And it continued to be so this week. New jobless claims rose 6,000 to 214,000, while the four week moving average rose 750 to 210,750. With the typical one week lag, continuing claims […]
Commentary taken from; USA Facts. Data is from “Table 7. Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers. “What are the biggest drivers of inflation in the past year?” USAFacts Answering the question proposed by the title? Housing was the main driver of inflation from March 2025 to March 2026. There is some of my editing […]
“Updating the long leading indicators: corporate profits, and housing.” – by New Deal democrat This week I’m spending some time updating the non-financial long leading indicators. As I wrote on Monday, I haven’t updated these in a while in large part because the chaos coming out of Washington has blindsided much of the economic data. There’s […]
New polling from Strength in Numbers shows the public supports impeachment, 55% in favor to 37% opposed. This supports the prediction from the betting market Kalshi that currently gives Trump a 68% chance of impeachment before the end of his term. (Note that removal by the Senate is much less likely than impeachment by the […]
Louisiana Court proposed Homeless Program, “Streets to Success Act“ AB: I do not believe this is a “failure to communicate” law as much as a failure to provide a place for people to go, sleep, and make a living. What do you do at that point? The state and county put you to work in […]
– by New Deal democrat Consumer spending is about 70% of the economy, and retail sales is our first wide measure of that spending. This morning’s update for March (still after all these months delayed about a week compared with the schedule before last autumn’s government shutdown) was unsurprisingly dominated by what happened at gas stations. […]
A year later, here’s where things stand on Trump’s manufacturing revival . . . What happened when Trump put a stack of tariffs into play? Not much good is happening for Labor, In the first place the amount of Labor in manufacturing has been declining for years due to manual machining going to multi-functional NC […]