The Detroit News Explains To Obama How He Could Learn Something About Coal From Europe

Here:

Europe’s experience with such hardline carbon rule-making [as Obama's] would suggest the [US Chamber of Commerce's] claims are more credible than the administration’s. Clean energy investment among European Union members dropped 14 percent in the third quarter of last year, as governments reconsidered policies similar to the ones Obama is putting in place.

The reason: Electricity costs in Europe are the highest in the world, and are helping to drive away manufacturing jobs. Instead of shutting down coal plants, Europe is actually building them again as a way of dropping those crushing electricity costs.

Higher utility bills will hurt poorer Americans the hardest, and ultimately will necessitate even more wealth transfer schemes.

In addition, the resurgent U.S. manufacturing industry will be slowed. Energy is a crucial component of building things, obviously, and today American manufacturers enjoy a distinct advantage because of relatively low electricity costs. Raising those costs will hit industrial states, like Michigan, particularly hard.

Attention Mish: Dump Google Translate and learn a second language already

From the story here:

The participants were given an intelligence test in 1947 at the age of 11 and were retested in their early 70s, between 2008 and 2010. Of the participants, 262 said they were able to communicate in at least one language other than English. Of those, 195 learned the second language before the age of 18, while 65 learned the language after this age.

Researchers found that those who spoke two or more languages had significantly better cognitive abilities in later life, compared to what would be predicted from their performance in the tests at age 11.

How come Neil Cavuto of FoxBusiness is so misinformed about the average age of US vehicles on the road?

Here:

What’s surprising right now is that while auto sales are predictably sluggish, they could be a heck of a lot worse. Auto analysts tell me that’s because the average car on the road is so old – close to nine years. Many owners have no choice but to replace their vehicles. But they’re clearly taking their time and many are waiting for just the right time, and the right sale.

Wrong Neil.

As of last August the average age was 11.4 years and climbing.

You don't go from 11.4 years to 9 years in less than a year.

If we had done so, we'd be in an economic boom right now instead of GDP in the toilet at -1.0%.

White House wants it both ways: blames bad GDP on harsh winter, credits good GDP on increased utilities consumption

Doesn't utilities consumption go up because of bad winter weather, in which case bad winter weather is good for GDP, not bad?

From WhiteHouse.gov here:

1. Real gross domestic product (GDP) fell 1.0 percent at an annual rate in the first quarter of 2014, according to the second estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. This drop follows an increase of 3.4 percent annual pace in the second half of 2013. Looking at the various components of GDP, consumer spending grew at a rapid pace, mainly reflecting sharp increases in health care and utilities consumption, while the other elements of consumer spending on net rose only slightly. Consumer spending on food services and accommodations fell for the first time in four years, one of several components that was likely affected by unusually severe winter weather. Exports and inventory investment, two particularly volatile components of GDP, also subtracted from growth. ...

3. The first quarter of 2014 was marked by unusually severe winter weather, including record cold temperatures and snowstorms, which explains part of the difference in GDP growth relative to previous quarters. The left chart shows the quarterly deviation in heating degree days from its average for the same quarter over the previous five years. By this measure, the first quarter of 2014 was the third most unusually cold quarter over the last sixty years, behind only the first quarter of 1978 and the fourth quarter of 1976. In addition, there were four storms in the first quarter that rated on the Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale (NESIS). The right chart shows that no quarter going back to 1956 had more than three such storms.

Obama's policies caused the GDP decline, not the winter

From The Wall Street Journal, here:

Gross domestic product decelerated to an annualized 1.2% in the January through March period--the slowest pace since the fourth quarter of 2012--from a downwardly revised 2.7% in the final three months of last year, Statistics Canada said Friday. On a monthly basis, GDP in March slowed to 0.1% as expected, from 0.2% in February.

The consensus call was for first-quarter growth to slow to an annualized 1.8% from the originally estimated 2.9% in the fourth quarter, according to a report from Royal Bank of Canada. ... The central bank had forecast growth of 1.5% in its April monetary policy report. ...

Despite the poor showing, Canada's GDP outpaced the U.S. where latest figures showed output shrank 1% at annual rates in the first quarter, as severe winter weather exacted a major toll on the economy.

Statistics Canada didn't specify the reasons for the slowdown in Canada, but bad weather could have been a factor.

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So, bad winter weather supposedly caused US GDP to go dramatically negative while in Canada the same bad weather didn't cause GDP to go dramatically negative. We supposedly froze to a standstill and died because of it, while Canadians went on their merry way as they usually do, just at a little slower pace.

Let's put it all in perspective.

The Canadian consensus estimate was off by only 33%, but in the US by some 400% (the consensus for the US revision was down to -0.2% from +0.1%). Apparently the cold affects our reasoning ability, too.

In nominal terms, US GDP on an annualized basis was up just $11.7 billion in 1Q2014 to $17.101 trillion compared with 4Q2013 in the second estimate. But in real terms this was deemed a decline of $39.4 billion, hence the negative print.

Canada's much smaller economy, which in current US dollars is about $1.58 trillion in size, produced an increase of 0.29% in the first quarter as announced on Friday, which annualized comes to 1.19%. In terms of constant prices this was an increase of 5.1 billion dollars Canadian in the first quarter, about $4.7 billion US.

So Canada's tiny little economy, nearly ten times smaller than ours, had the temerity to produce about 40% of our nominal GDP in the face of one of the most brutally cold and snowy winters in the last 100 years.

Put that in your winter-caused-the-GDP-to-decline pipe and smoke it, Mr. Obama. The Great White North may be smaller, but it works harder than you and your Dreamer pals ever dreamed.

UPDATE: The proper comparison, because the Canadian figures are in constant dollars, that is, already inflation-adjusted dollars, is between Canada's positive addition of $4.7 billion US to their GDP vs. America's subtraction of $39.4 billion in real terms from their GDP.

So Canada's 10x smaller economy managed to produce net positive GDP in the extreme weather conditions which Americans to a man blame for their net negative GDP.

Frankly, I'M DISGUSTED WITH MY COUNTRY! 

S&P500 rises just 0.18% to make another new high on Friday at 1923.57

Bank Failure Number Nine: Slavie Federal in Bel Air, Maryland

Slavie Federal Savings Bank, Bel Air, Maryland, failed last night, costing the FDIC $6.6 million. It's the ninth bank failure in 2014, and number 501 since February 2007.

Cold wintry places which had positive GDP, unlike the US under Obama (-1.0%)

Poland     +1.10%
Denmark     .89%
Germany     .80%
England       .80%
CANADA   .70%
Switzerland .50%
Norway       .30%

24 from France's National Front elected to European parliament, 24 from England's UKIP

In each case, nationalist parties won a clear plurality of seats from their countries' respective delegations, which are only 74 and 73 strong to begin with, respectively. It is a strong vote of displeasure from the citizens of France and the UK in sending nearly a third of their parliamentarians from parties of the right to raise hell over the Euro.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard thinks this means it's curtains for the EU, here:

The EU authorities are now in a near hopeless situation. The logic of EMU is a further erosion of nation states. The "Two Pack", "Six Pack" and "Fiscal Compact" are all coming into force, and national regulators are losing control over their banking systems. The euro will inevitably lurch from crisis to crisis without some form of fiscal union and debt pooling. Yet voters have just let forth a primordial scream against any further transfers of power.

Adam Carolla: What are female comedians doing about the lack of Jewish roofers? I demand answers!

Here in "The gay mafia is real."

Yesterday's new high for the S&P500 at 1920.03 was a rise of just 0.425% from the previous high

If George W. Bush had a negative GDP report, you'd never hear the end of it

21 quarters into his presidency Barack Obama produces -1.0% GDP growth to start the year and everyone is falling all over themselves to excuse it if they have to talk about it at all, while most people the day after the announcement aren't talking about it at all. Not even the right wing. It's astonishing. By far the worst GDP performance of any presidency in the post-war, even worse than W's, and no one has one thing to say about it.

My country, on medication.

Your Michigan coalition to protect perversity includes Chambers of Commerce and big business, and The Nerd

The Nerd is a member of a PCUSA church, aka CPUSA

Reported here:

The Detroit Regional Chamber and Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce on Thursday joined a coalition seeking to add sexual orientation and gender identity protections to the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act of 1976. ...

Gov. Rick Snyder "does not believe in discrimination" and remains "open to having a conversation with the Legislature" about changing the law, said spokesperson Sara Wurfel, noting he thinks "it would be great to tackle sometime this year." ...

The business coalition behind the push formed earlier this month with founding partners AT&T, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Consumers Energy, Dow Chemical Co., Google, Herman Miller, PADNOS, Steelcase, Strategic Staffing Solutions and Whirlpool Corp.

Chrysler, Pfizer, the Kellogg Company and a handful of other businesses also joined the coalition this week.

Bank purchases of Treasurys at highest level since 1Q 1994 help drive demand and prices higher, yields lower

The Wall Street Journal reports here:

U.S. banks also have been big buyers of government debt. Treasury bondholdings of commercial banks and savings institutions rose to $237.2 billion at the end of March, the highest since 1995, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Traders and analysts said the purchases have been driven by tighter banking regulations aiming at improving banks' balance sheets after the 2008 financial crisis. Overhauls such as the Dodd-Frank financial law in the U.S. and global regulations require financial institutions to hold more high-graded debt. The $12 trillion U.S. Treasury bond market is the world's most liquid bond market.

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The 1Q 1994 level held by financial institutions was $310 billion.

The 10 year Treasury yield fell to 2.44% yesterday. On May 1 it had stood at 2.57%.

Obama GDP Failure: 1Q 2014 GDP revised down to -1.0% from +0.1% in second estimate

From the BEA news release here, which fails to make mention of either "winter" or "weather" in the report:

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- decreased at an annual rate of 1.0 percent in the first quarter according to the "second" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  In the fourth quarter, real GDP increased 2.6 percent. ...

The downturn in the percent change in real GDP primarily reflected a downturn in exports, a larger decrease in private inventory investment, and downturns in nonresidential fixed investment and in state and local government spending that were partly offset by an upturn in federal government spending.

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The consensus estimate for the revision had been -0.2% from +0.1%, while worst case scenarios had talked about -0.4%, so this is quite the stunner to go all the way down to -1.0%.

If the American economy has become so fragile that a little bad weather can knock off economic growth while China doesn't let a little thing like that stop it, we're in worse shape than I thought.

What's really showing up here is continuing weak demand after a quarter which included Christmas which could only muster so-so GDP at 2.6%. The weakness was already evident there.

The failure that is Obama continues. His average report of GDP after 21 quarters falls to 1.70%.

If "climate change" caused famine and brought down the Bronze Age, why did hungry conquerors DESTROY food?

It's a question which this classicist doesn't seem to have asked himself before writing here, in The New York Times:

The marauders are thought to have been the Sea Peoples, possibly from the western Mediterranean, who were probably fleeing their island homes because of the drought and famine and were moving across the Mediterranean as both refugees and conquerors.

One letter sent to Ugarit advised the king to “be on the lookout for the enemy and make yourself very strong!” The warning probably came too late, for another letter dating from the same time states: “When your messenger arrived, the army was humiliated and the city was sacked. Our food in the threshing floors was burned and the vineyards were also destroyed. Our city is sacked. May you know it! May you know it!” ...

We still do not know the specific details of the collapse at the end of the Late Bronze Age or how the cascade of events came to change society so drastically. But it is clear that climate change was one of the primary drivers, or stressors, leading to the societal breakdown.

---------------------------------

There's famine, and then, well, there's famine.

Temperature was quite a bit warmer 3000 years ago than it is today, but without the present day scale of supposed human-caused climate change. Why aren't people asking why? And somehow mankind survived to produce what we know as human history despite all that. It is sad to see academics who specialize in the ancient world jumping on this bandwagon of climate hysteria when their own area of expertise ought to tell them that there is something terribly wrong with the contemporary theory. It is more plausible that the much warmer conditions of the past simply produced more human flourishing than the food supply at that time could sustain. And those much warmer conditions of past human history ought at least give them pause. 

Brian Wesbury sounds just like the regime: Dude, that bad GDP report was so two months ago

Brian Wesbury, here:

But regardless of which part of the GDP report accounts for the downward revision, the most important thing to remember is that the report is for the first quarter, the last days of which ended almost two months ago. It's a "rearview mirror" picture of the economy. The winter weather was awful, everyone knows it, and everyone knows that the economy in Q1 was weaker than in recent years.

---------------------------

Like Obama administration narratives which have consistently blamed exogenous events for bad economic news everytime it comes out, which has been every time (it is a global economy after all), facts must never be allowed to interfere with the reality, which in Wesbury's case is his narrative of the ploughhorse economy of continued growth of a plodding, unspectacular but nevertheless good-enough sort that we should all embrace as indicative of the resilience of the great free-market economy of the United States.

Ya man, hallelujah.

Nevermind growth has been declining since 1984 and precipitously since 2004 as America made the shift to wanton free trade and debt-fueled economic growth. TCMDO doubled at its fastest pace in the post-war under Carter/Reagan from 1977 to 1983 and under Reagan from 1983 to 1989, building the foundation of our present discontents in the form of massive debt.

When those bad actors pulled prosperity from the future into their present, our past, they neglected to tell us that we have to pay it back when we get to the future they pulled it from, our future, our now.

Welcome to it. Time to pay up, ploughhorses.

We remember and give thanks with countless others

I love Kim Strassel of The Wall Street Journal, but they can't let her on again without fixing her teeth

Seen here.

And the makeup and eyelashes are pretty bad, too.

This is just criminal to do to such a good journalist.

Whack job writes in support of reparations

Errin Haines Whack in the UK Guardian article

 

"The 'Case for Reparations' is solid, and it's long past time to make them: Ta-Nehisi Coates's piece reveals the conversation that Americans need to start about our history of racial oppression",

 

here:

[A]n African-American writer telling this story in a legacy, mainstream publication like The Atlantic . . . adds weight and validity to the argument – and makes reparations harder to dismiss, yet again, as "crazy talk".

-------------------------------------

 

Translation: We've got liberal whitey licked. Time to drive the knife home.

These people have always lusted for blood, and they may get it. The knife cuts both ways.