I don't know if any of you saw this, but last weekend I was in Granite Falls, WA, doing a wilderness survival training course. It was the hardest thing I ever did. Tested me to the limit, even more than my rim-to-rim Grand Canyon day hike in 2021.Nonstop rain, cold. Slept outside under a tarp. Had really poor equipment. I had to learn to compartmentalize my thoughts into half hour intervals just to get through the night. No sleep, by the way. I simply couldn't.Frankly, I am still processing...

 I did a video on attachments and how attachments are a source of our suffering. (Buddhist concept.) I related it to investing and trading. (i.e. we are "attached" to the outcomes.)People got pissed off. They unsubscribed or criticized me on talking about this.Is this normal? I've been trading for over 40 years. Been a member and floor trader on 4 exchanges. Managed money for a major hedge fund. Ran a proprietary trading desk for a major international bank.Economist by education. (Wharton,...

History is replete with those times when we got it all catastrophically wrong. Including for sure those times when some deranged soul led a people into the insanity of war; but also those like The Spanish-American War, World War One, The Vietnam War, and The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars where the cues of change were missed or misread. For many of these times, ‘none so blind as those who will not see’ was a good fit. The very thought of change makes...

Perfect follow-up to Dean’s earlier commentary “Declining population and diminished national power is bad news?” which I also posted at Angry Bear. In Dean’s earlier commentary, he makes a point of declining population not being a big issue. Decreasing productivity would be a far bigger issue except it is not an issue in the US. The numbers of older people are increasing in the US. As Dean points out, “If wage growth moves in step with productivity...

Strong upward revisions push real personal income to new highs, put 2 important coincident indicators firmly in expansion territory  – by New Deal democrat Almost all of the news in this morning’s release for personal income and spending for January was positive. Nominally, personal income rose +0.6% and personal spending rose 1.8%. The deflator also rose +0.6%, making real personal income close to unchanged, and real spending (after...

You don't know what's going to happen, so what should you do? Trade and invest using the concepts of MMT. Get a 30-day free trial to MMT Trader. https://www.mmteconomics.com/ Mike Norman Twitter https://twitter.com/mikenorman Mike Norman Economics: https://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/ Understanding the Daily Treasury Statement video course. https://www.pitbulleconomics.com/understanding-daily-treasury-statement-video-course/?s2-ssl=yes

If you don’t believe me about the importance of these flows, and how they dictate, economic activity and market trends, just watch this video.

Full text.Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of ChinaChina’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis2023-02-24 09:00

from Dean Baker On a lazy Friday afternoon, a person’s thoughts naturally turn to car price indexes. There is actually a reason that I became interested in this topic. I noticed that in the January Consumer Price Index, the new vehicle index rose 0.2 percent. The December measure was revised up due to new seasonal adjustment factors so that what had been reported as a 0.1 percent decline last month is now reported as a 0.6 percent increase. I was inclined to think this was an aberration...