Husband and dad of 4. Executive Editor & economist at Mises Institute. Former economist at State of Colorado. Author of 'Breaking Away' and 'Commie Cowboys.'
Price inflation is NEVER caused by greed. It's always caused by a growing money supply. The money supply has grown big-time since 2020, and now we pay a lot more for food and housing. More:
For the blame-free-markets-for-everything crowd, a shortage in baby formula—one of the most regulated corporatist products—was caused by "capitalism." In truth, of course, the blame lies with protectionists and gov't programs like WIC and the FDA.
"If you can imagine a twentieth century without communists, without Nazis, that’s very probably what we would have had without the [US entry into the] First World War" ~ Ralph Raico
The US will add another 2 trillion $ to the total debt this year, and the US is now spending a trillion of your dollars on interest per year. And, there is no end in sight.
“Africa doesn’t have the vaccines and the resources to fight COVID-19 that they have in Europe and the U.S., but somehow they seem to be doing better,” she said.
Powell says we're not in recession. I think he's right. I think we're more in a period like the fall of 2007 when numbers were looking bad, but the *really* bad news was still months away.
War dissenters are branded "Putinists" by the foreign policy elites who casually flirt with nuclear war. But preferring negotiations to World War III hardly makes one a Putin sympathizer.
"As clinical studies from the U.S., Israel, and Qatar show—and many Americans can now personally attest—there is substantial evidence that people who are vaccinated can both contract and contribute to the spread of Covid-19."
When the USSR invaded Afghanistan, few Americans were absurd enough to demand American companies in the USSR close themselves down. Now American brands flee foreign markets because the Twitter mob says so.
The big picture: US unemployment has been below 4% for 27 months. That's an incredible stretch that hasn't happened since the late 1960s.
Hiring has slowed in past year, but it's still encouraging:
Labor force +1.3 million in the past year as more people look for work.
# of
WATCH: A massive part of Trump's 2nd-term agenda is to charter TEN new mega-futuristic cities in various states on federally-owned lands
"Almost one-third of the landmass of the United States is owned by the federal government, with just a very, very small portion of that
The secret service, the alleged elite of the "thin blue line" ignored warnings of a shooter and allowed the shooter to set up a sniper nest on a nearby roof. This level of competence is what we've come to expect from the overpaid, privileged members of "law enforcement."
This week, the Fed hit the panic button and slashed the fed funds rate by 50 bps. History shows the Fed does this right before a recession, and Powell can't explain why "this time is different." More here with graphs:
In a normal universe, we have a name for this sort of monetary policy: it’s called “extreme dovishness” or “extremely accommodative.” In the bizarro world of 2021, it is anti-inflationary.
The Fed's target price-inflation rate went from zero percent to 2 percent and then to a "flexible" and "longer run" 2 percent. This means the 2-percent target is little more than a political slogan. More at :
Does the Austrian version of money supply (TMS) provide insights? The gap between M2 and TMS does a pretty good jobs of identifying recessions - when the gap goes from + to -. It's also closely connected to yield curve inversions.
As we sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, consider that before the 17th century, dining rooms didn't even exist, and families had few places to comfortably enjoy a meal at home. Then came industrialization, bigger houses, and "domestic sociability."
Fed Chairman Powell basically said today that a September rate cut is a done deal. The bad news is that Fed rate cuts usually come right before a recession starts. More at
@mises
and
“The agency has been reluctant to make those figures public,” according to the Times, “because they might be misinterpreted as the vaccines being ineffective.”
Money-supply growth accelerated, year over year, in August by the largest amount in 23 months. The Fed now fears a recession, so expect more money growth going forward as the Fed tries to blow new bubbles. For graphs and more, see:
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@jimbovard
, I haven't forgotten the way conservatives and some libertarians began to absolutely LOVE the regime-and defend its every move-during the Bush years. Any opposition meant you were some kind of communist or terrorist.
September's job "blowout" was driven by government jobs and part-time work. Private employment fell 463,000 from Sept 2023 to Sept this year. Government jobs, on the other hand, rose 598,000 during the same period. More
@mises
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Fed governor Christopher Waller explains how the central bank fell behind:
-The Fed made assurances (called forward guidance) in late 2020 that conditioned removing stimulus on labor market gains
-The labor market was unusually difficult to forecast
Police willingly attacked people for being on their own property. Do not doubt police will also take your guns and destroy your life for any reason the regime decides. Police care about their paycheck, not you.
Wow.
@stlouisfed
published the graph on the left with two different Y axes to make it look as if China's defense spending outpaced the U.S.
The graph on the right shows how the spending actually compares, with U.S. defense spending dwarfing all others
"By comparison, vaccine-induced memory B cells are less robust, evolving for only a few weeks and never "learning" to protect against variants, researchers reported in a paper published on Thursday in Nature"
Recession signal: Since Mar 2023 govt jobs have grown faster than private jobs. Last month government jobs up 2.7 percent while private employment was up 1.6 percent. Growth in govt jobs has been outpacing private jobs for the past 14 months.
I keep seeing lame comments from libertarians about how the Disney special district is a "private city" with no govt oversight. Give me a break. It's the equiv. of a big shopping mall with private security that sells its own muni bonds. Nothing more.
If we take a closer look at the latest jobs data we see the household survey shows the economy LOST jobs over the past year. Whenever this happens, the economy is either in recession or about to enter one. More here:
Given that the number of employed people hasn't increased in 11 months, her claim that "people keep getting jobs" can only be true if she means "second jobs".
JUST IN: Another big jobs report. The US economy added 272,000 jobs in May, blowing past expectations of ~190k. People keep getting jobs, esp. in healthcare., gov’t and hospitality.
**Unemployment rate: 4% —> This is the first time at 4% or above since Jan. 2022*
Wage gains:
An appeals court has ruled Oberlin college must pay $31 mil for trying to destroy a small family business for "racism." Bill Anderson covered the whole sordid affair:
Angelo Codevilla has died. RIP. He had some really solid hardcore anti-regime stuff in recent years. His column calling for the abolition of the CIA was quite good:
no one is going to like this but...
there's a decent chance that China, over the next 20-30 years becomes the new "America".
people will be in total awe of its "streets paved in gold" and will learn Chinese to try to move there.
seems farfetched, but wait.
Prof Adam Finn, a government vaccine adviser, said over-vaccinating people, when other parts of the world had none, was "a bit insane, it's not just inequitable, it's stupid".
The clear message in today’s soft jobs report is the Federal Reserve needs to cut interest rates. They should have begun cutting rates months ago. Job growth is decidedly throttling back, unemployment is rising quickly, hours worked per week are low and falling, and temporary
Ukrainians are ok with invasions of countries other than their own. Much like Americans. A press release from the US Army in 2008 (Poles supported the invasion also):
Brendan Brown's book 'The Case Against 2% Inflation' is a fantastic blend of good economics, monetary policy history, and modern-day financial mkt analysis. Here's my review:
"Mark Thornton, a senior fellow at the Mises Institute, argues there is "no question" that the U.S. is in a housing bubble, but "where we are in the housing bubble is a different matter."
Fed officials like Jerome Powell have long downplayed CPI as a price inflation measure in favor of the PCE index. But, much like CPI, the PCE measure is now also hitting 40-year highs.