To The Weekly Standard crowd al Qaeda collaborated with Saddam Hussein, Vladimir Putin with Donald Trump

We don't need any more immigrants: Population increases have outpaced labor force increases for a decade

Before the Great Recession the growth rate of the labor force easily exceeded the growth rate of population for decade after decade, but since then the situation has reversed dramatically.

Population has been increasing at a rate 75% higher than the labor force over the last decade. The increased population is not assimilating to work.

THERE IS NO LABOR SHORTAGE.

Increasing the population of the non-working has been the number one drag on the economy, causing GDP to fall and debt to rise, negatively impacting every standard measure.

Republicans retained 80% of "pure" House retired seats but this fool believes whatever Rush Limbaugh says

One false move on the bullet train in China and your credit score goes down

Video here.

Dear passengers,

People who travel without a ticket or behave disorderly, or smoke in public areas will be punished according to regulations and the behavior will be recorded in individual credit information system. To avoid a negative record of personal credit please follow the relevant regulations and help with the orders on the train and at the station.

Already ranked tenth in the nation for drug addiction, drug wave in Michigan sweeps Democrats into power

Proposal One legalizing recreational marijuana dragged the druggies out of the woodwork yesterday, sweeping Democrats into power in Michigan in the offices of governor, attorney general and secretary of state on the coattails of nearly 2.2 million Yes voters.

In addition they propelled other liberal propositions to victory including redistricting reform and motor voter, attracting 2.3 million and 2.6 million Yes votes respectively.

These voters also rewarded the liberal Republican-endorsed Supreme Court Judge Elizabeth Clement with reelection, who controversially voted to put George Soros' Proposal Two on the ballot this summer.

Democrats were swept into office on the coattails of these ballot proposals by vote totals nearly as large as for the proposals themselves.

The Nerd is a Jerk: My asshole NeverTrump Republican governor in Michigan, Rick Snyder, just robocalled me asking me to vote for a lowly state senate candidate

But he never mentioned his fellow Republican running to replace him, Bill Schuette, to fill his term-limited seat.

Snyder's failure to back Schuette is a green light in Michigan for Republicans to withhold their vote from Bill Schuette, the candidate for governor endorsed by Donald Trump.

Just for that I'm voting for "Ketchup" instead of for Chris Afendoulis.

And in the race for MI-3, Justin Amash's seat in the US House, I'll be voting for "Mustard".

GDP is growing at a rate 66% better under the first two years of Trump than under the last two years of Obama

The economy of the last ten years has had much more in common with the Great Depression than the post-war

South Africa racks up two quarters in a row of negative GDP growth under land-grabber Cyril Ramaphosa, new president since February

Ramaphosa's domestic policy is centered around "land reform", i.e. seizing land without compensation. Apparently production is already suffering because farmers are convinced there's no point to going on any longer.

South Africa farm seizure: Terrified white farmers plot escape as crackdown looms:

A RECORD number of white South African farmers have put their land up for sale amid fears the ruling party is considering confiscating properties bigger than 25,000 acres.

By SIMON OSBORNE

PUBLISHED: 07:03, Mon, Aug 20, 2018

UPDATED: 07:26, Mon, Aug 20, 2018

Omri van Zyl, head of the Agri SA union, which represents mainly white commercial farmers, said: “The mood among our members is very solemn. They are confused about the lack of any apparent strategy from the government and many are panicking. So many farms are up for sale, more than we’ve ever had, but no one is buying.” ... Agri SA said about 20 per cent of South Africa’s farms produce 80 per cent of the food that feeds millions of people in southern Africa, and many of those properties would be affected by a 25,000-acre cap.

Tucker Carlson says there's nothing free about this market, falls short of calling it an expression of global fascism

But who knows, maybe his forthcoming book connects the dots between the multinational corporations and their revolving door governments, and the central banking system which mediates the operation.

Here:

TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: 

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is worth about $150 billion. That’s enough to make him the richest man in the world, by far, and possibly the richest person in human history. It’s certainly enough to pay his employees well. But he doesn’t. A huge number of Amazon workers are so poorly paid, they qualify for federal welfare benefits. According to data from the nonprofit group New Food Economy, nearly one in three Amazon employees in Arizona, for example, was on food stamps last year. Jeff Bezos isn’t paying his workers enough to eat, so you made up the difference with your tax dollars. Next time you see Bezos, make sure he says thank you.

Same with the Waltons. The Walton family founded Walmart. Collectively they’re worth about $175 billion. That’s more than the entire gross domestic product of Qatar, the oil-rich Gulf state. The Waltons could certainly afford to be generous with their workers. Instead, they count on you to take up the slack. In 2013, taxpayers sent more than $6 billion to Walmart’s workers, for food stamps, Medicaid, and housing assistance.

And if you think that’s shocking, meet Travis Kalanick. He’s the youthful founder of Uber. His personal fortune is close to $5 billion. His drivers, by contrast, often make less than minimum wage. One recent study showed that many Uber drivers lose money working for the company. That’s not a sustainable business model. The only reason it continues is because of your generosity. Because you’re paying the welfare benefits for Uber’s impoverished drivers, child billionaires like Travis get to keep buying bigger houses and more airplanes. He’s someone else who definitely owes you a thank you note.

If you can think of a less fair system than that, send us an email. We’d love to hear it. It’s indefensible. Yet almost nobody ever complains about it. How come? Conservatives, like us, support the free market, and for good reason. Free markets work. But there’s nothing free about this market. A lot of these companies operate as monopolies. They hate markets. They use government regulation to crush competition. There’s nothing conservative about that, just as there’s nothing conservative about most big corporations. Just the opposite. They’re the backbone of the left. Pick a leftwing cause that you think is hurting the country. Check the donor list, and you’ll find the name of some corporation. Often many corporations. Corporate America enables the progressive lunacy you see every night on this show. They’re funding the revolution now in progress.

That’s why liberals say nothing as oligarchs amass billions by soaking the middle class. Because they’ve been paid off. For example, you probably assumed the people who founded Walmart were conservative. Most of their customers certainly are. Yet the bulk of the Walton family backed Hillary Clinton in the last election. They gave the Democratic Party more than $700,000 during the 2016 cycle. Almost every billionaire in Silicon Valley did the same. In return, they got immunity from criticism, and you got to keep paying their employees. Not a bad deal for them.

There is one person in Washington who’s offended by this arrangement, and we’re sorry to say he’s wrong on pretty much everything else. But this is a weird moment, so you take allies where you can find them. Bernie Sanders, of all people, is trying to get your money back from Jeff Bezos. This is especially amazing since Bezos is on Bernie’s side on most things. They’re both leftwing activists. But on this question, Bernie’s right. He’s planning legislation that would force big corporations to return the taxpayer-funded welfare benefits you’ve paid to their workers. It’s not a perfect solution, and it probably won’t pass. No matter what they claim in public, liberals in Congress would never support something like that. Their loyalty isn’t to you. It’s to Uber and Jeff Bezos. But at the very least it might awaken a sleepy population to the new reality of activist corporate America. And that’s a good thing.

America has changed enormously in the last 20 years. A lot of people you thought were your allies are in fact working against your interests. They have contempt for you and your family, your customs and your faith. Included in this group, I’m sorry to say, are a lot of big corporations. They have no use for you or the country you grew up in. Stand in their way, and they’ll crush you. It’s all shocking enough that I recently wrote a book about it. It’s called “Ship of Fools,” and it explains what happened and who did it. The book is out in a month, the first week of October, but you can preorder a copy now, and I hope you will.

Noah Smith embraces the Trump narrative: "There’s no doubt that the U.S. economy is in a boom"

Here for Bloomberg.

After examining several indicators, which, however, are not unequivocal for their interpretation despite saying "no doubt", Noah Smith comes down on the side of improved sentiment as the cause of the current "boom".

On that we agree. There's a boom in sentiment.

The problem is, too many people are importing that improved sentiment into their reading of the data, and into their choice of the data.

For example, Smith focuses on job openings to unemployed, which is a tiny measure (6.66 million in June) of what's really going on in the labor market. But the broadest measures of unemployment still show 15.9 million unemployed, underemployed, and no longer counted in the labor force. There is still huge slack in the labor market, which is one reason why wages for the vast majority of workers are not rising like they would in a real economic boom (2.7% y/y in July vs. in the 4s in 2006/7).

Similarly Smith discusses the percent of population employed aged 25-54, but clearly misses that it's most definitely not "back to 2006 levels" as he claims (H1 2018 is at 79.2%, still below the 2006 average of 79.8% and also below the average of either half of 2006). The broadest measure of the percent employed, on the other hand, still shows a huge gap between now and the pre-Great Recession average when over 6 million more were employed than are at present (60.5% now vs. 62.9% then, on average).

The case is similar with domestic investment.

Smith chooses to highlight "Shares of gross domestic product: Gross private domestic investment: Fixed investment: Nonresidential (A008RE1Q156NBEA)" to show that "investment as a percentage of the economy is at about the level of the mid-2000s boom". But the current level in H1 2018 at 13.7% is also identical to H2 2014. Was that indicative of a boom? Did we blink and miss it? How about in H1 2008 when it was again at 13.7%? Was that indicative of a boom? If so, why did the economy then promptly crash in H2 2008?

A broader measure of domestic investment, however, "Shares of gross domestic product: Gross private domestic investment (A006RE1Q156NBEA)", shows us well off the 2006 peak and even the more recent 2015 level. Whatever we call what we have right now, the current 17.7% is still far below the 19.8% level of H1 2006, which itself failed to equal the boom level of the year 2000 (19.9%).

With all that cash unleashed by the tax reforms and sloshing around in the economy, one would think things would look a lot better than this, which simply shows that most of that money indeed went elsewhere.

GDP has been temporarily goosed by the tax reforms in concert with a fresh gusher of federal deficit spending. But those are one-offs. They will not, and cannot, be repeated over and over again in short succession.

We know what comes next.

Atheist George Will conflates economy and stock market, remains oddly superstitious about deficits

George Will forgets we've had trillion dollar deficits quite recently but without a stock market crash. 

The trillion dollar deficits recently were in:

2009 $1.41 trillion

2010 $1.29 trillion

2011 $1.29 trillion

2012 $1.08 trillion.

These deficits triggered nothing in particular except fevers among Republicans, but are associated with the misallocation of capital which produces L-shaped instead of V-shaped economic recoveries. Meanwhile that it's an L-shaped recovery is a concept which eludes George Will, eyes fixed as they are on his towering S&P 500 idol. But we do agree the economy isn't the best it's ever been as the president insists. The gap is now about $5 trillion and rising.

Here:

When He, or something, decides that today’s expansion, currently in its 111th month (approaching twice the 58-month average length of post-1945 expansions), has gone on long enough, the contraction probably will begin with the annual budget deficit exceeding $1 trillion.

Egyptian American Abdul El-Sayed came within 3 points of beating Gretchen Whitmer in Kent County MI in the Democrat primary for governor

Whitmer overall captured the nomination for governor among Democrats in Michigan with nearly 52% of the vote, but Democrats in the county around Grand Rapids, Michigan, are clearly very divided. El-Sayed crushed Whitmer in the city itself, 49% to 36%, and beat her also in the city of Wyoming.

El-Sayed is an accomplished individual, who however has the support of very far left people like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Linda Sarsour, and of the far left The Nation magazine.

Good comparison of the presidents on GDP by Justin Fox at Bloomberg

Guess Which Presidents Really Oversaw Economic Booms

Fox well reminds his readers that GDP is an inadequate measure in many respects, and gives credit where credit is due even when the numbers don't seem to show it.

His second chart is the better chart since it is a political comparison, which is what this is all about, pegging beginning and end of analysis to fourth quarters when presidents are elected or eclipsed.

He has Kennedy and Johnson first and second (5.5% and 5%), followed by Clinton (3.8%), Reagan 3.6%), Carter (3.2%) and Nixon 3.0%), then IKE (2.5%), then Ford and Bush 41 tied (2.2%), with Obama (1.9%) and Bush 43 (1.8%) bringing up the rear. (Trump so far is seventh, ahead of IKE but behind Nixon, at 2.7%).

A few quibbles.

The data is plenty fine for Truman 1948-1952. He should be included. His performance is the best of them all on a full term basis (5.54%), using the same compound annual growth rate Fox uses. The secret to Truman's success? He slashed government spending in the wind-down from World War II. No one seems to get that. By cutting taxes and not slashing spending, Republicans since Truman only defeat themselves and discredit what works.

Secondly, JFK didn't serve out his first term, Nixon his second. Therefore it makes more sense to view JFK coterminous with LBJ (5.19% together), and Ford with Nixon (2.73%), evaluating them together in two eight year periods of Democrat and Republican political administration respectively, which is what it was.

Third, Fox rounds his numbers, which obscures how close Bush and Obama were in their terrible records (1.83% and 1.88% respectively). 

All in all, though, we come up with similar results: Truman is first (5.54), followed by JFK/LBJ (5.19), Clinton (3.81), Reagan (3.55), Carter (3.19), Nixon/Ford (2.73), IKE (2.52), Bush 41 (2.21), Obama (1.88), and Bush 43 (1.83).

Trump's first year through 4Q2017 is 2.47%. Measured 2Q2017 on 2Q2018 just completed he's at 2.85%.

Only by comparison with the previous sixteen years is this anything to cheer about, but thankfully we have that.

Democrat socialist Ocasio-Cortez is a crackpot, says everyone has two jobs when multiple jobholding is at historic lows

The lights are on there, but nobody's home. Even at the historic highs it was less than 7% of the employed, and that was back in the Clinton era when the economy is pretty much universally acknowledged to have been a lot better than it is now. That suggests multiple job holding is a good thing, not a bad thing. When people can get two jobs that means there is more opportunity to work harder to save for important goals and pay for them. No coincidence, either, that GDP was better then when more people worked multiple jobs. More work equals more GDP.

The stock market closed lower after Trump's 4.1% GDP today, selling the news

Rush Limbaugh: Trump supporters don't think running around with Playboy playmates means anything compared with saving the culture

Incredible. What's to save, then? 

The basis of culture is the cult, that is, religion. Mine teaches that such behavior is wrong. I'll bet Melania's does, too.

If you want to make promiscuity the new cult, well, count me out.

Keep in mind that Rush Limbaugh is a drug addict and serial monogamist who has been wrong about far more than little old GDP in his lifetime. He was ecstatic to have that flaming homo Elton John sing at his third fourth wedding, so there you go. His Methodism is thimble deep, like his education.

Trump is nothing more than a transitional figure. Once the force of his personality is gone, nothing will be left . . . unless of course he builds that wall.

Here:

For example, Lowry says this incident on tape with Trump talking to a fixer about paying off a Playboy playmate would sink anybody, particularly any Republican candidate. Why doesn’t it sink Trump? Well, we’ve been through all the reasons for this. One of Lowry’s explanations is that the bar has been set so low with Trump that no new revelation is gonna shock anybody, not after the NBC Access Hollywood video. And so there just isn’t anything that’s gonna shock anybody. Trump’s already survived numerous such attempts to take him out.

So something like this, as far as Trump supporters are concerned, there’s nothing new here. No reason to get upset. But I think it’s far more than that. I think not enough credit’s being given to the sophistication of Trump supporters. And it is that it doesn’t mean anything, when compared to what these people think is really important, like saving the country, like growing the country, like saving our culture. Whether Trump’s running around with Playboy playmates is not relevant to them.

Rush Limbaugh is a GDP boob, again

Rush Limbaugh can't remember good GDP under Obama for two reasons.

One, he's never read the press releases from the BEA. These are available anytime of day or night, including right now, right on Al Gore's amazing internet, for the whole Obama era, but it's more convenient to ignore them at the time if they occasionally disagree with your broader political point.

Second, Limbaugh doesn't realize that real GDP is a moving target. Real means it's an inflation-adjusted figure, and therefore is constantly updated going back in time to incorporate inflation's effects. Therefore no report of GDP he remembers from the past is worth anything today, except in the context of its time.

Limbaugh also doesn't understand that while GDP is subject to constant revision from month to month for this and other reasons, today's report is the 15th comprehensive revision, which occurs every five years. The last one was in 2013. If you looked at the data before the 2013 revision and compared it after you'd see noteworthy differences in the numbers you may have remembered differently.

Comprehensive revisions incorporate new methodologies and measurements across all the data. Today's data revision does just that going back all the way to 1929. Limbaugh wants you to believe new methods and measures under Obama distorted Obama's numbers uniquely but weren't applied uniformly to all the data, which is a complete falsehood.

Here's the recent history of 4.0 real GDP or better from today's revisions vs. contemporaneous BEA press releases:

2Q2018: 4.1%

3Q2014: 4.9% (5% in third estimate Dec. 2014)

2Q2014: 5.1% (4.6% in third estimate Sept. 2014)

4Q2011: 4.7% (3.0% in third estimate March 2012)

4Q2009: 4.5% (5.6% in third estimate March 2010).

Trump's GDP in the first half of 2018 is comparable to Obama's and Bush's best performances before him. That's a hopeful sign. But Trump supporters like me will have something to really crow about if and when these numbers look like they did in the 1990s, and do it consistently.

So far, they don't.

The biggest disappointment in today's GDP report was the collapse of private investment

Compared with the average from 2007-2017, the points contributed to real GDP in 2Q2018 by private investment plunged 128%. It was the only category which actually subtracted from real GDP (-0.06 vs. an average contribution of +0.211 from 2007-2017, which includes the subtractions of the Great Recession era).

This was awful, but predicted by just about everybody. The tax cuts were supposed to deliver investment. Instead, they delivered consumption, an orgy of consumption, relatively speaking. The contribution from personal consumption was up 127% compared with the prior eleven year average, some part of which is fueled by borrowing. Total consumer credit outstanding in May hit a new record $3.897 trillion.

And speaking of fuel, the biggest gainer percentage-wise was net exports (oil), its contribution up a whopping 1414% over the previous period average. That's great for the oil business, but consumers are paying over three bucks a gallon for gasoline today. A lot of the personal consumption increase (above) is going straight into the fuel tank.

That's a neat trick of GDP. Export a commodity needed at home, driving up the price which consumers pay, and then the government turns around and counts consumers' misfortune as a sign of a growing economy! Yeah! Reelect the president!

Finally we have the contribution from government expenditures and investment, also up in a huge way, 1056% over the previous period average contributed (which includes all of Obama's stimulus). We needed the big increase to defense spending, to be sure, but that's for maintaining the possibility of increased standards of living. It's not the same thing as an increased standard of living.

Cue the happy talk. Surely it's five o'clock somewhere.

GDP hysteria

Earlier in the week the economic calendar at FXStreet had indicated a consensus estimate of GDP at 4% for 2Q2018. With less than an hour to go, that prediction has risen to 4.1%.

GDPNow at The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta gave it's final prediction of 3.8% yesterday.

Cheerleaders for Trump on talk radio have been crowing like roosters about a booming economy, pointing to the unemployment rate, and they hope to GDP.

GDP consists of four major components: personal consumption, private investment, net imports/exports, and government consumption and investment.

That last one can contribute significantly when there are big increases to government spending, such as just occurred with defense spending.

I expect to see that reflected in this morning's report, but it shouldn't be confused with an economic boom anymore than stimulus spending under Obama.

Government can pay people to dig a hole and other people to fill it back in again, but that is not an economic boom. Neither is a fireworks display.