The November 2000 election didn't lead to the biggest percentage drop in consumer confidence on record, but it did mark the point after which we turned to make consistently lower percentage lows once again, beginning with 911, then Hurricane Katrina in late August 2005, the bailout debacle of October 2008 and the protracted unemployment from the Great Recession thereafter, and the pandemic shutdown of April 2020 and its inflationary aftermath.
That's 78% worse than during Trump I, and 24% worse, respectively, mostly due to higher energy prices affecting overall prices this year but also due to tariffs which were worse last year than this year for core prices but remain an overall drag.
Not seasonally adjusted:
CPIAUCNS January - August 2026:
2.38, 2.41, 3.25, 3.81, 4.24, 3.53, 3.36, 3.39
CPILFENS January - August 2026:
2.50, 2.45, 2.59, 2.75, 2.85, 2.59, 2.47, 2.44
Inflation persisted in August, potentially locking in a Fed interest rate hike
... The report is the final major inflation indicator the Fed will see before it holds its policy meeting next week, concluding Wednesday with a vote on its key interest rate.
Traders responded to the numbers by ramping up bets that the Federal Open Market Committee will increase its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point. Odds for a hike jumped to nearly 90%, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tracker of fed funds futures prices. ...
If it weren't for low standards, they'd have no standards at all.
Hassett kept up to $5 million Coinbase stake as Trump reshaped crypto policy
... “I think he’s got a major conflict of interest, or the appearance of one,” said Virginia Canter, chief counsel and director of ethics and anti-corruption at Democracy Defenders Fund. ... “Crypto was a major initiative of the Trump administration,” Canter said. “Did [Hassett] not review anything in crypto? Did he not participate in any meeting with the administration on policy? Did everyone know not to talk about crypto around him? I doubt it.” ...
Ah, an 8-day table instead of a 7-day.
Not gonna catch me dividing by a smaller number, no-sir-ee.
This JMIC Advisory Note leads off with no fewer than 8 ship incidents, 5 of which were U.S. CENTCOM disabling actions.
For the tanker table please go here:
Joint Maritime Information Center Update 095 JMIC Advisory Note 10 September
Meanwhile at this hour . . .
WTI $102.87
BRENT $108.16
USA GASOLINE $4.27
Not seasonally adjusted:
PPIFID January - August 2026:
3.07, 3.36, 4.28, 5.69, 5.91, 5.57, 4.84, 5.44
PPICOR January - August 2026:
3.71, 3.83, 3.94, 4.91, 4.49, 4.79, 4.25, 4.62
New houses are selling at an annualized rate of 607,000 in July 2026, with 488,000 available in July and supply at 9.6 months.
Existing homes are selling at an annual rate of 3.98 million in August with 1.62 million available and supply at 4.9 months.
Highest supply in a decade for existing homes indicates sellers are asking too much.
You know what to do.
Home sales fall in August despite the highest supply in over a decade
... Sales of previously owned homes fell 2% in August from July to 3.98 million units on a seasonally adjusted, annualized basis, according to the National Association of Realtors.
... Housing supply totaled 1.62 million homes for sale at the end of August, up 3.2% from July and up 5.9% from the year before. At the current sales pace, that represents a 4.9-month supply — the highest level in over a decade, according to NAR.
Despite more supply, prices continue to rise. The median price of a home sold in august was $429,100, up 1.6% from August 2025. That is a new record high for the month of August.
... Homes are sitting on the market longer, averaging 31 days in August compared with 29 days in July. ...
This is nothing but another gimmick in a long line of gimmicks, brought to you by the unserious.
Serious governments attack high interest rate problems by cutting spending and raising taxes.
Neither American political party has had the courage to do those things in decades because Democrats demand endless spending to reduce endless poverty and Republicans demand endless tax cuts to stimulate endless lousy economic growth.
Bessent’s political turn in GOP speech tests his bond-market credibility
... His speech comes against the backdrop of the Treasury Department on Wednesday saying it would buy back as much as $6 billion in long-term Treasury debt this week, with a cap of at least $4 billion in operations later this year. The department began the buyback program in 2024 to solve a well-documented problem where trading can be thin for some long-term debt. ...
10Y yield at this hour is 4.92%.
20Y is 5.36%.
30Y is 5.351%.
And 2Y is at 4.514%, a 52-week high like the rest.
ECB hikes interest rates to 2.5% as policymakers see risk of higher inflation, weaker growth
... Eurozone inflation hit 3.3% in August, with energy inflation spiking to 14.3%. ...
10Y yields at this hour:
Wholesale prices rose 0.4% in August, as expected
... On an annual basis, that put PPI at 5.4%, still well above the Fed’s 2% inflation target and 0.1 percentage point higher than expected. ...
Drudge and more importantly the Washington Examiner should be ashamed of themselves for putting up this crap.
The Iran war and $40 trillion debt just made Chinese bonds look safe
by William Nye, student and columnist from Australia
Yeah, Chinese bonds look so safe that China itself owns TWO TIMES MORE UST than foreigners hold of China's own goddam government bonds, and both sums are tiny little dwarfs compared with the $40 trillion U.S. government debt market.
Foreigners own $0.2962 trillion of Chinese government debt as of mid-2026.
China in June owned $0.6334 trillion of U.S. government debt at the very same time.
Meanwhile foreigners altogether owned $9.299 trillion of U.S. debt in June.
Bonds are only as good as the people backing them and as good as the government which can tax them to pay them off.
Individual median disposable income in the United States in 2023 was more than EIGHT TIMES higher than in China at $38,110 compared with China at $4,588.
In America tax compliance on wages and salaries is nearly 100%.
In China you need to roll out the tanks.
Stupid people read these stupid headlines and stupid articles and stay stuck on stupid.
Too often that leads to getting stuck to the pavement.
As Social Security fund runs dry, some Republicans say it’s time to raise taxes
... But Cole, at least, said he thinks the political blowback from Social Security benefit cuts would be far worse than a comprehensive solution that includes raising taxes.
“I love Grover [Norquist]. But … you’ve got to deal with Social Security,” Cole said. “And believe me, you’ll have a lot bigger problem if it goes bankrupt than you’ll have keeping it whole, because people will feel cheated.” ...
Tom Cole is right. Just fix the damn thing.
A person who has contributed the maximum every year since 1983 has accumulated about $475,000 including the employer match. At a current maximum monthly benefit draw of about $5.1k, that sum is exhausted in just under eight years, if he lives that long.
The wage cap for Social Security taxes paid by such a person has not been pegged to inflation. It's been higher than that. Had it been pegged only to inflation since 1983, Social Security taxes today would top out at $120k of wages instead of $184,500.
The wage cap tracks the national average wage index. And Medicare taxes are not capped at all and capture all income.
If it's true that the intent of indexing to the national average wage index was to capture 90% of all aggregated U.S. earnings, a future fix should include an increase to the wage cap to close the gap which has developed. Today's cap captures only 83% of aggregated income.
In other words, the wage cap, even though it rose much higher than the rate of inflation since 1983, still did not rise high enough.
We should fix that and move the wage cap higher as indicated, but we should not remove the wage cap entirely, which would sever the connection between contributions and benefits. That means raising the wage cap to $300,000 and creating a mechanism for automatic increases to maintain the 90% standard.
That would be in addition to raising the retirement age gradually from 67 to 69, and immediately raising the payroll tax to 7.2% from 6.2%.
Just do it.
The data comes as stock prices continue to hover near all-time highs, while wage growth is barely keeping up with inflation.
On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that wage growth slowed to its lowest rate in five years in August and remains below the broader pace of price growth.
It’s the latest data point reflecting a decades-long stagnation in returns to labor, while corporate profits have exploded.
Since approximately the start of this century, the S&P 500 stock index has gained about 600%. Over the same period, inflation-adjusted worker earnings have climbed just 12.5%.
Since April, the prices consumers pay are rising faster than wages.
What’s driving it all?
Economists aren’t really certain about the exact cause, but a confluence of factors appears to be at work, according to Mike Konczal, vice president of policy and research at the Economic Security Project and a former White House chief economist in the Biden administration.
The start of the century coincided with what is known as the “China Shock,” as Beijing’s entry into the World Trade Organization massively accelerated globalization and offshoring.
The shock chipped away at the number of traditional blue-collar workers in the U.S., and it reduced the bargaining power of those who remained.
Meanwhile, technological advances have allowed the typical worker to generate larger volumes of more valuable services.
But those gains are being captured as company profits, not as wage growth.
The trend appeared to reverse, or at least stabilize, for a brief period during the post-pandemic economic reopening. But exactly why that happened is still not entirely clear.
The decline resumed after President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025.
Konczal said some economists believe corporations have sought to increase their profit margins at the expense of higher wages for workers in order compensate for the economic uncertainty that Trump’s tariff policies have created.
Regardless of the specific reasons behind the renewed drop in gains for labor, the decline has implications for all of society, Konczal said.
It stands to increase wealth inequality by putting more resources in the hands of capital owners — namely stock market investors — while the returns to workers stagnate.
It also has fiscal implications: Konczal said efforts to increase taxes on wealth or corporate profits have proved politically untenable so far, compared with the current arrangement of taxing earned income and wages instead.
“The economy can start to become unequal in a way that it’s not just the CEO who makes more, but people who own shares do, and that wealth is very, very unequal,” he said.
WTI: $92.95
BRENT: $97.61
GASOLINE USA: $4.09
Bring back the cult of work.
We have 11.76 million teenagers 16-19 years old, 7.45 million college kids 20-24 years old, 25.89 million core adults 25-54 years old, and 67.63 million people 55 or older, all of whom did not work in August 2026.
That's over 112 million eating but not working.
They can't all work, obviously, but if each group lived up to its own past peak performance, 13.27 million more across all groups could in fact be working who are not working.
That 13.27 million more working is just 11.8% more.
GDP sucks in part because we aren't working up to our past potential.
As I incessantly point out, the key to a happy life is a full time job, because it allows you to arbitrage it for a car, a home, a spouse, and children.
Peak full time in America was in July 2000 when 54.67% had a full time job. In August 2026 just 49.14% did. The difference between those two points at current population is an extra 15.2 million full time jobs which we don't presently have.
America is a much bigger place now than in July 2000, too, by 63 million in civilian non-institutional population. Shouldn't that also make us stronger?
Do we really think an extra 15 million out of 112 million is dreaming the impossible dream?
We need leaders who don't think so.
But this guy . . .
WTI: $91
BRENT: $96
GASOLINE USA: $4.12
Over 112 million, that's who:
67.2% of teenagers 16-19 years old: 11.8 million
33.7% of the college-aged 20-24 years old: 7.5 million
19.9% of prime working age adults 25-54 years old: 25.9 million
64.1% of the population 55 years old or older: 67.6 million.
The percentage of each age group's population which works is in structural decline:
Teens since 1978 (get a haircut and get a real job);
College kids since 1989 (because they went to college more and more after that, duh);
Core adults 25-54 since the late 1990s (they keep getting knocked down but they mostly keep getting back up again 👍 -- this is a huge tranche with some people carrying the load more than others, and you know who you are);
Americans 55 and over since 2019 (the Great Recession didn't kill 'em, from which they made more than a nice recovery, but they are not going to recover from the pandemic era for decades to come because Peak Baby Boom turned 62 that year).
All theatre.
Yes, very bad theatre, but theatre nonetheless.
The foreign born population in August 2026 is virtually unchanged from October 2024.
"Fiscal discipline" from Mad King Ludwig:
New York Fed’s Williams says yield surge due to strong economic prospects
Analysis: Lower Treasury yields could require a weaker economy. Trump won’t fix them
... The rise in real yields is “more of a reflection of the strength of the economy,” New York Federal Reserve President John Williams told CNBC Wednesday. Some people want to read the rise in yields as dragging on the economy, but that logic is backward, he said.
“It’s not really about financial conditions affecting the economy. It’s more about the economy affecting financial conditions,” Williams said.
The flip side of Williams’ analysis is that it may take an economic slowdown for borrowing costs to cool. But that isn’t a solution anyone would want to root for.
They hate you with the heat of 1,000 suns.
U.S. payrolls rose 162,000 in August, much more than expected; unemployment rate at 4.1%
Manufacturing employment as a percentage of population:
Trump tells Fed to slash rates or he’ll end trade with countries with U.S. surpluses
If ever an act deserved the hook, this is it.
The Reagan tax revolution made America ripe for globalization, but you can't explain that to a mouthbreather.
The goal wasn't globalization.
After all the dotcom malinvestment, the entry of China into the WTO opened a door to a ready, welcome, and fateful solution which became globalization, funded by oodles of low marginal ordinary income tax rates.
We need more philosophers, and fewer Rubios.
The rate cut in September 2024 was the real disaster because inflation was not licked, and yields now have simply retested their highs after some hopeful but ultimately failed signs of spending discipline around DOGE and of increased revenue from tariffs.
The failure to win in the Persian Gulf just compounded the inflation problem, restoring the status quo ante, and then some.
The Fed is the one needing the help, but it isn't going to get it from a spendthrift Congress and reckless executive branch.
Vance says Fed should lower interest rates: ‘Would be nice to have some help’
The percent increase to the foreign born population was 3.27% in January 2025, the highest on record.
That's a Trump Administration figure which it is more than happy to blame on Biden, but it came out under Trump's watch in February 2025, not under Biden.
It would be to Trump's advantage to exaggerate the problem on the front end to claim larger effects on the back end.
But it makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE that there would be the biggest surge of immigrants into the country ever just as their biggest enemy ever is about to take office.
Meanwhile the biggest percentage declines to foreign born population came in June 2023 and April 2024, 1.91% and 1.92% respectively, when Biden was still president.
We don't interpret that as evidence of a non-existent Biden policy which was tough on migration.
Whatever one makes of the government data, it shows that we still have 48 million foreign born in America in July 2026, same as we did in December 2023. The figure captures both legal and illegal aliens in addition to American citizens.
The question I have is why is this all coming out one day before we get the August 2026 data?
Are they expecting bad news and trying to get out ahead of it?
Trump cuts migrant population by nearly 3 million; total U.S. population likely to drop
President Trump has cut the illegal immigrant population by 2.3 million since he took office, according to a preliminary analysis of government numbers to be released Thursday.
... The drop in illegal immigrants, although significant, is lower than the Homeland Security Department’s own published figures.
In January, at the one-year mark of the Trump presidency, the department said it had removed nearly 3 million illegal immigrants from the country, including 675,000 compelled deportations and 2.2 million self-deportations. ...
Private payrolls rose by 38,000 in August, less than expected, ADP reports
... Manufacturing lost 17,000 jobs, professional and business services was off 16,000 and both the natural resources and mining as well as trade, transportation and utilities reported declines of 5,000. ...
WTI: $89
BRENT: $94
GASOLINE USA: $4.09
