”Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”~Napoleon Bonaparte What should Senate Democrats do about the GOP continuing resolution? Filibuster and send it back to the house, which will certainly mean a shut-down? Or let it pass on the grounds that Democrats can’t be blamed for the consequences? James Carville’s argument is that […]

This past Sunday the New York Times ran an essay (gift link) adapted from Ezra Klein’s new book with Derek Thompson.  The book, which I look forward to reading, is on abundance liberalism.  Klein’s essay begins as follows: I keep seeing Democrats say the resistance failed. On these pages, James Carville counseled Democrats to “roll over and […]

 – by New Deal democrat To review briefly, the monthly JOLTS reports give us a more granular look at the employment sector, but are delayed by one month vs. the jobs report. Like the jobs reports, most JOLTS series have shown deceleration for several years. The question over the last year has been whether they […]

Scenes from Friday’s jobs report: the (totally contradictory) Big Picture  – by New Deal democrat There is no important economic data today, so let’s take a closer look at some of the noteworthy items from Friday’s jobs report. I’ll start out with the Establishment Survey side and then turn to the Household Survey side. Goods […]

 – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. The malign and moronic “policies” of the 2nd T—-p Administration so far have driven Economic Policy Uncertain to all time record highs: But despite that, the rumblings under the surface of the data have been quite minor so far. There are changes in […]

Trump was only supposed to hurt “those people”: “Jennifer Piggott proudly hung a red-and-blue Trump campaign flag outside her one-story home during the November election race. Now, after she was abruptly fired from her civil service job, her days of supporting the president are over. “Piggott is among more than 125 people dismissed in February […]

but some 3+ year highs in unemployment metrics  – by New Deal democrat My question over the past year has been whether “decleration” would turn into “deterioration.” For a “soft landing,” deceleration would need to end, and the numbers stabilize, vs. continuing to deteriorate towards an actual downturn.  The verdict this month was mixed. On the […]

As a subscriber to xpostfactoid, I have access to some excellent commentary by Andrew Spung. This is not a person I would argue with about the ACA, Medicare or Medicaid, etc. Anyway, the WSJ has an article touting Medicaid cuts which did catch his attention and is the basis for his commentary. The link is […]

Economically weighted ISM indexes for February indicate continued slow growth  – by New Deal democrat Because manufacturing is now of much less importance to the economy than in the decades before the Millennium, I now use a weighted average of the ISM services index (75%) as well as manufacturing (25%) as the primary forecasting tool. […]

Economist Claudia Sahm believes there is little or an unlikely chance of a recession due to “DOGE” efforts. The magnitude of the layoffs, let-goes, retirements, etc. are not enough to bring on a recession. After reading this I am beginning to think, this is more of a scare tactic by Musk and Trump (he would […]