– by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog Our final housing statistics of the month are the FHFA and Case Shiller repeat sales indexes. As usual, keep in mind that mortgage rates lead home sales, which in turn lead prices. Which, in turn, lead the official CPI measure of shelter by a year or more. This morning the FHFA purchase only price index through February spiked a sharp 1.2% (!) on a seasonally adjusted monthly basis, causing the YoY...

It’s election season in the U.S., marred only by the minor complication of a criminal trial involving one of the candidates. Trump is on the campaign trail, and he is going big on trade policy. Or rather, trade lunacy.Here’s Gavin Bade at Politico attempting to explain Trump’s trade policy: Trump is considering a 10 percent universal import tariff, the former administration officials said, and one result of that policy could be to make the dollar weaker relative to other currencies. This is...

Unexpected Meeting Sparks Unusual Mission

American Education: Cultural Influences Explained

By Les Leopold Chelsea Green Publishing Interesting book I just started to touch upon. Book review by Paul Prescod. Last section touches upon why layoffs may happen . . . Stock Buybacks and Deregulation. Across the political spectrum, it seems as if the right to decent employment has disappeared from the agenda. Wars, natural disasters, and Donald Trump’s antics grab headlines while the closing of a major factory doesn’t register a blip....

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog About 10 years ago, I went looking for what I called “mid cycle indicators.” In other words, I wanted to go beyond leading or lagging indicators to find at least a few that tend to peak somewhere near the middle of an expansion. That synapse was jangled when I read the title of a recent update by financial analyst Cam Hui, “Relax, it’s just a mid-cycle expansion.”  Since I hadn’t looked at the...

This is the easiest one. No possibility of changes. It’s Biden/Harris v. Trump/Sycophant. For Biden, the alternative is clear: the race would be between Kamala Harris and DJT. Credit where due: Biden has reconfirmed on multiple occasions that he does not intend to replace Harris with Sherrod Brown the Mythical Generic Democrat with No Baggage, or even the fifth columnist whose every peccadillo is known to the opposing party (G.N.) As of this...

Susan Neiman on why left is not woke .[embedded content] As argued by Susan, the universalist ideas of the Enlightenment are still relevant, despite the numerous criticisms that have been levelled against them. The Enlightenment was characterized by a spirit of exploration that led to new discoveries in both science and culture. Rather than promoting a narrow worldview, it encouraged people to question assumptions and religious beliefs. It still provides a...

That nails it.

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Living within your means is considered a virtue in many cultures, with one notable exception – the United States, whose public debt grows by roughly a trillion dollars every 100 days and is projected to continue doing so for the next few decades. In the past, it helped to sustain the so-called American lifestyle, but Continue Reading The post Owing the US a Living? first appeared on Michael Hudson.