More on the FTC investigating Albertsons and Kroger as to whether they are truly competitors. The issue being how much of the market-controlled now by each and what would result after Kroger acquires Albertsons. Both the FTC and Unions argue “FTC argues different stores have different use cases. FTC lead attorney Susan Musser noted “you […]
Yes, I get occasional commentaries from this substack. No, I am not going to post it all here. Follow the link after you read what I did post of Claudia Sahm’s here. Labor market conditions. – by Claudia Sahm Tomorrow (9/6) is the jobs report for August 2024. There is intense attention for any clues […]
– by New Deal democrat My focus continues to be on whether jobs gains are most consistent with a “soft landing,” i.e., no further deterioration, or whether there is further decline towards a recession. For a change, this month the Establishment report was the weakest in several years, if still positive. Meanwhile the Household report rebounded […]
A brief introduction by an Econofact News Letter exploring the impact of income on voting turnout. I did not include the explanation link information in this commentary as it would be too lengthy. However, the links are there if you wish to read further into this explanation. This is short enough to provoke a discussion […]
CNBC The plight of hotel workers in cleaning up after residents who stay for a few days and leave the room in a wreck. The pay id the minimum that can be made. The hazards are such a worker can become readily sick. from exposure. I am sure the pandemic caused issues. Plus, people do […]
Last week CEO Vivek claimed most of his text messages were automatically deleted. Also and previously investigators were show messages going back and forth between players in this issue. Investigators asked those messages be kept. Apparently, those too have disappeared or portions of them have. It appears Albertsons has been milked by private entities Cerberus […]
– by New Deal democrat Recently I have paid much more attention to the ISM services index. That’s because, since the turn of the Millennium, manufacturing’s share of the economy has contracted to the point where even a significant decline in that index has not translated into an economy-wide recession, as for example in 2015-16. When […]
The Phillips curve plays a central role in the policy debate (this is partly due to the fact that debaters have finally learned to ignore very highly theoretical and unrealistic DSGE models). Just to review, the Phillips curve should show a negative relationship between unemployment and actual inflation minus expected inflation (it has been defined this way since […]
A soft landing (disinflation without a recession) looks possible. Also the remaining threat is the FED’s sticking with high interest rates, even though inflation is at a very reasonable level (I personally publicly argued that the inflation target should be 4%) and will almost certainly decline even if unemployment remains low. The change can be […]
– by New Deal democrat The weekly news from jobless claims continues to be good. The hypotheses that the summer increase was unresolved post-pandemic seasonality, plus the several week spike post-Beryl was all about Texas, both have held up very well. And that has continued to be the case against more challenging YoY comparisons as the […]