Kawasaki Heavy Industries plans (2018) to restructure rolling-stock operations amid heavy losses, exploring such options as quitting the business and teaming up with other companies. This is unusual for a major Japanese firm to pull out of an industry, a country, and the United States. Or at least I find it unusual having worked for a Japanese company […]
Focus on Fracking: US oil price at a 7 year high; largest US oil inventory build in 7 months; global oil shortage at 2,400,000 barrels per day as OPEC output is 375,000 barrels per day short of quota. Commenter and Blogger RJS OPEC’s October Oil Market Report Wednesday of this week saw the release of OPEC’s […]
Bad Biden Foreign Policy I have posted on this previously, but not for a while. The main meme is that for reasons I mostly do not get, Biden has been carrying over a lot of bad Trump foreign policies. Some of them I understand for political reasons, even when they damage the US and world […]
Commenter and Blogger RJS at Market Watch 666 Retail Sales Increased by 0.7% in September after July and August Sales were Revised Higher Seasonally adjusted retail sales rose 0.7% in September after retail sales for July and August were revised higher . . . the Advance Retail Sales Report for September (pdf) from the Census Bureau estimated […]
Vaccine hesitancy is a serious problem. It is killing people and prolonging the social and economic costs of the pandemic. One possible policy response is to make vaccination mandatory, at least in certain contexts (hospitals, schools, interstate transportation, etc.). Libertarians frequently object to vaccine mandates in uncompromising terms. They exaggerate the risk of vaccine side […]
Author, Farmer, and Economist Michael Smith briefly talking returns to Cattle Ranchers and profits to meat processors and retail. The beef industry is under fire, we’ve been seeing this for years. We first saw where Smithfield has taken over whole towns for pork production, vertically integrating as much as possible, even to take a cut of […]
Continuing the conversation concerning Medicare and Medicare Advantage programs – Value Added Healthcare. Background Kip Sullivan and I have had a running dialogue on Value Added (VA) healthcare. This usually starts up with my asking a question, giving my doubts on certain topics, and a back and forth in an exchange of emails. I have […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for October 11 – 15 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. There are a couple of signs that the inflationary surge may be at or just past its peak, mainly in that the costs for ship transportation, which have been soaring for months, have […]
Another strong month for real retail sales growth; to cope, employers are going to have to sweeten the pot to add employees Real retail sales, perhaps my favorite monthly economic indicator since they tell us so much about average consumer behavior, and are also a good short leading indicator for jobs, were reported this morning […]