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

Industrial and manufacturing production suggest front-running production has peaked

– by New Deal democrat The final datapoint for today is industrial production, including its important manufacturing component.  Last month I wrote that “I suspect the big increases in February and March in manufacturing, like this morning’s retail sales numbers, were about front-running T—-p’s tariffs. Which means that like retail sales, production might have been […]

Shrinking our way to excellence on autism

Back in the 1960s, it was believed that autism was caused by “refrigerator moms,” moms who were cold and aloof and thus drove their otherwise normal children into a lifetime of autism. Nobody believes the refrigerator mom environment anymore. Research has shown that autism has a heritability of 60-80%. So while there may be environmental […]

Department of Justice Indicting a Judge

Attorney Joyce Vance discusses what is interesting about this piece other than being correct. The Department of Justice is attempting to indict a judge. Judge Dugan “is entitled to judicial immunity for her official acts. The case cited which protects a judge is Trump v. United States, the case where the Supreme Court gave Trump immunity […]

Car Build in the US

This is the latest article discussing US automotive manufacturing I could find right now. If I could find my old charts I would use to plan components, I could offer more up-to-date information. However, the US automotive industry builds millions of cars each year and accounted for 2.8% of all nonfarm jobs in the US […]

Real retail sales turn down in April, but continue to reflect consumers’ front-running of tariffs

 – by New Deal democrat Next up in today’s slew of data is retail sales. This is one of the most important indicators I look at, because it tells us so much about consumers, and since consumption leads employment, it gives us information about the trend in that as well. In April, nominally retail sales […]

Does Trump Get To Decide Who Is An American?

– by Joyce Vance @ Civil Discourse The stakes are high, even though the Supreme Court won’t be deciding, at least not yet, whether Trump’s order to end birthright citizenship is constitutional. Tomorrow (written on May 14), the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the Birthright Citizenship Case, Trump v. Casa, Inc. We’re here because Donald […]

Jobless Claims May 15 2025

Jobless claims: more of the same  – by New Deal democrat After a long data drought, there are many releases today. I’ll start with jobless claims. Initial claims were unchanged at 229,000, while the four week moving average rose 2,250 to 230,500. With the typical one week delay, continuing claims rose 9,000 to 1.881 million: […]

“it would grant citizenship to the children of those who “owe [the U.S.] no allegiance”

The Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the Birthright Citizenship Case, Trump v. Casa, Inc. May 15, 2025. Some history and argument . . . The arguments are not new. The willingness of an Administration to act on them are Jonathan H. Adler During the first Trump Administration, some of the President’s supporters urged him to […]

Average and aggregate nonsupervisory real April wages continued to fuel the consumer

 – by New Deal democrat Now that we have April’s consumer inflation data, let’s update real wages for average American families. In April average hourly wages for nonsupervisory employees increased 0.3%, and aggregate payrolls for nonsupervisory employees increased 0.4%. Since CPI increased 0.2%, in real terms wages (light blue) increased 0.1% and aggregate payrolls (dark blue) […]