Tag Archives: Hot Topics

September manufacturing new orders and August construction spending both turn down  – by New Deal democrat As usual, we begin another month and another quarter with important manufacturing and construction data. The ISM manufacturing index has a very long and reliable history. Going back almost 75 years, the new orders index has always fallen below 50 within 6 months before a recession, and in three cases did not actually cross the line...

As you can see bullet spewing weapons takes the lead this week. There are a lot of articles as taken from JAMA Network. which also has more and unlisted here. You are probably also wondering why the term “bullet spewing weapons” verbiage. There was always a discussion on semi-automatic, automatic, revolvers, etc. So, I cut to the chase. We are talking about weapons which spew bullets. Hence the name. Everything else is a mixture of various topics...

This is kind of an interesting story. It shows how crazy some of us and it also shows a presence in our military too. Active or reservist military are not supposed to be doing this. Here we have an off-duty officer of the Massachusetts Army National Guard following a busload of senior citizens in a dangerous manner . . . tailgating. He then confronts them when they reach their hotel. “An off-duty Massachusetts National Guard Lt. Colonel...

I really have to write about macroeconomics given the drama across the Channel in the UK. The story so far is that New Prime Minister Liz Truss and Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng have managed to spook money managers by threatening to cut their taxes . Kwarteng proposed a mini budget cutting the top marginal tax rate (etc). The Pound depreciated not quite reaching parity with the dollar (fell bellow 104 cents though) and the 10 year...

Kind of a mixed bag of what news was showing up in My In-Box. It was evenly spread amongst various topics. Ford building a battery plant just like everyone else is planning. Wall Street buying up residential homes. That purchasing of houses will come to no-good for the average citizen. ACA Preventive is under threat by a looney federal judge in Texas and SCOTUS has to decide. Non-Opioid pain treatment sounds like a good idea. If you do not like the...

Pharoah Sanders Has Passed  One of the greatest musical performances I ever saw live was in Spring 1966, sorry have not tracked down exact date, in the University of Wisconsin-Union theater. It was a live performance of the final group of John Coltrane. None of his great quartet from “A Love Supreme” were in it, but it still completely blew my mind.  Somehow this group had another saxophonist besides the greatest of them ever, Coltane, this guy...

House price indexes: more evidence of a summer peak  – by New Deal democrat The Case Shiller and FHFA house price indexes were updated through July (technically, the average of May through July) this morning. Ordinarily I do not pay them too much mind, but this year they are very important in confirming a peak in house prices. Although the FHFA index is seasonally adjusted, the Case Shiller index is not, so the best way to show them in...

This is a good one from Prof. Heather Cox-Richardson. It is along the lines of what I would consult in at various companies till I fixed it and was no longer needed. It is an update on what has happened in the United States. Something which has not occurred since pre-Reagan. The nations labor is being “valued” again. Peter Drucker: “Balance Sheets are meaningless. Our accounting systems are still based on the assumption that 80% of costs are...

Senate Democrats on a Wednesday back a while ago blocked two bills from Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas). The bills would be using COVID-19 stimulus funds to bolster school security and mental health resources for students. Sounds like a much -needed idea given past circumstances. Cruz’s proposals: The Securing Our Schools Act, which was cosponsored by Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), would double the number of police officers in public, charter, and...

Mike Konczal and Niko Lusiani at the Roosevelt Institute take a closer quantitative look at the sources of inflation the last two years: This research brief is the first to explore the size and distribution of markups (essentially the difference between sales and marginal costs) and profit margins across 3,698 firms operating in the US in 2021, reproducing and updating the analysis of Jan De Loecker, Jan Eeckhout, and Gabriel Unger’s The Rise of...