Tag Archives: Hot Topics

January 17, 2023, Letters from an American, Prof, Heather Cox Richardson Texas attorney general Ken Paxton responded this evening to the federal government’s demand that state troops give U.S. Border Patrol agents access to Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas, the site where three migrants died last week as they tried to cross the Rio Grande.  Aarón Torres and Joseph Morton of The Dallas Morning News reported that Paxton’s letter acknowledged that...

It appears like someone is waking up to a reality. When they can, corporations will take advantage of an economic event to increase margins resulting in increasing profits. They will call up and say they are increasing prices, take it or leave it. When your customer is one of the big three, you take it. And, you will not be able to pass along the pricing increase. One scenario, I experienced. Prices are simply the sum of costs and corporate...

I remember reading SI occasionally when I was a kid. I liked the writing and the photos. As a long-distance runner, I was mostly interested in articles on track, cross-country and marathons. I wasn’t interested in ball sports. And don’t get me started on calling auto racing a “sport.”I see where Sports Illustrated is on the ropes. It’s another symptom of the collapse of the dead tree journalism industry. I’ve certainly contributed to that collapse by...

Just below, I express my shock caused by the disappearance of basic copy editing, blocking, and tackling at The New York TImes, but, in this article, I want to discuss substance. The article on what President Nixon did in 1979 is, aside from that little slip, very interesting. It notes that people in Taiwan are worried about Xi Jin Ping (rationally) and don’t trust the USA to protect them (very very rational). However, they don’t seem to feel...

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...