Tag Archives: Hot Topics

Weekly Indicators for January 15 – 19 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The big headlines yesterday were that stocks made a new all time high, for the first time in two years. Meanwhile, estimated plus actual earnings so far for the 4th Quarter of 2023 were on track for their lowest number since Q1 of 2021. Either corporate earnings are going to rebound sharply or stocks have...

According to yesterday’s navel-gazing piece in the Boston Globe*, “on-the-fence” voters are edging to supporting Trump because they feel looked down upon by Democrats. WTF? Do they seriously believe that Trump *doesn’t* look down on his supporters? It is blindingly obvious that the only person on the planet that Trump cares about is Donald Trump. The toolkit of Trump and the Trump GOP consists entirely of cultivating resentment: resentment of American...

Briefly noted: existing home sales appear to be bottoming near 30 year lows as prices continue to firm  – by New Deal democrat Last month I wrote that existing home sales “are likely in the process of bottoming, as they have been in the range of 3.79 million to 4.10 million for the past five months:” That continued to be the case in December, as sales declined -3,000 on an annualized basis to 3.78 million: On a longer term basis,...

The alleged “appeal” of Ron DiSantis is that he’s “Trump without the baggage.” So why is DiSantis (and Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, the other Trump imitators) doing so poorly? The answer is that the Trumpenproletariat *want* the Trump baggage. To them, that’s his appeal.The Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan nailed this decades ago: the medium is the message. Trump is the medium and thus Trump is the message. Anyone else is a different medium...

Housing construction changes little in December; but increased mortgage rates from H2 2023 have not yet been digested  – by New Deal democrat For this post, I’m going to show what the housing market looks like from most to least leading of the indicators. That shows that, although this morning’s release for housing permits and starts for December was generally positive, it is more likely that housing construction will decline rather than...

 A key factor in many manufacturing companies is the outsourcing of the manufacturing of components which the parent company has become expert in creating, manufacturing, and quality control of components. Unless a company’s employee is to be on site, it is difficult to ensure the quality of manufacture. The outsourced company does not have the innate ownership of the sourcing company. Been at this too long. I was reading on Linked-In how a bunch...

Jobless claims: bar one week, the lowest number of layoffs in over half a century  – by New Deal democrat To reiterate my theme from last week, we’re back to the virtuous scenario where almost nobody is getting laid off. Initial jobless claims last week declined -16,000 to 187,000. Except for one week in September 2022, this is the lowest number in over 50 years (since 1969, to be more precise). The 4-week average declined -4,750 to 203,250,...

Who saved the US from a pandemic and delivered a good economy. The 2024 political cycle, a triumph of recycling. President Biden and former President Trump are preparing to star in a sequel most Americans do not care to see. That means that eyes will be on the vice-president, Kamala Harris, as well. Because Mr Biden is the oldest president ever, and would be 82 at his second inauguration, voters will scrutinize Ms. Harris with unusual care. The...

Fireworks, drone swarms, military history and the military future. Oh and China always China. This is a followup to The 101st Chairborn: History is a Prankster The key new point is drone *swarms* that is thousands of drones in coordinated flight. the point is that e even if a drone is slow so that the chance of shooting it down is 99.99%, the chance of shooting down all of 10,000 isn’t (0.9999)^10000 = 1/e because the drones draw fire from...

Industrial production continues in near-recessionary trajectory  – by New Deal democrat In contrast to this morning’s good news on consumption, production continued its lackluster 2023 all the way to the end. Total industrial production (blue in the graph below) increased 0.1% in December, but revisions to the two previous months totaled -0.2%, so the net result was a -0.1% decrease compared with where we thought we were in November....