So much winning!
Iowa (DMR/NBC): Trump 43, DeSantis 16, Haley 16, Scott 7
Trump came in second behind Ted Cruz in the Feb 1, 2016 Iowa Republican Caucus:
Ted Cruz 27.64%
Donald Trump 24.3%
Marco Rubio 23.12%.
Monday, October 30, 2023
Sunday, October 29, 2023
Saturday, October 28, 2023
Weekend crew at CNBC has a hangover
CNBC front page runs both stories:
Search for Maine shooter continues (yesterday morning)
Search for Maine shooter ends (yesterday evening)
Friday, October 27, 2023
Speaking of neologisms, US House Democrat Cori Bush, member of the Hamas Wing, is a self-described "politivist"
"When the pro-Hamas wing occupies the Capitol it's not an insurrection".
Words mean whatever they say they mean, silly.
Core pce inflation at 3.7% yoy in September 2023: Two years and five months in excess of 3%
Overall pce inflation has been stuck at 3.4% yoy for three months running as of Sep 2023, which indicates to me the Fed will at the very least keep rates where they are, or possibly raise them again as progress has stalled.
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| overall |
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| core |
Today's ridiculous neologism is "mediatized" in a story about old-fashioned stock collapse of the bank which canceled Nigel Farage
Trading suspended apparently at 4.21 USD
Trading in NatWest shares was briefly suspended on Friday morning as the stock slid after a combination of lacklustre earnings and regulators flagging possible rule-breaking in a highly mediatized case. ...
A scandal erupted over the summer over the closure of the Coutts account of Brexit figurehead Nigel Farage, for which the politician said the lender did not initially provide a reason. Farage filed a subject access request to obtain a dossier that the bank held on him, which addressed his political views.
NatWest CEO Alison Rose then admitted to discussing Farage’s bank account with a BBC reporter, supplying information that was used in a story and later proved to be inaccurate. She eventually resigned in July, amid heavy criticism.
More.
Thursday, October 26, 2023
Hamas wing of the Democrat Party in Michigan divides its legislature
Differences over what’s happening in Israel and Gaza were laid bare in the Legislature, where Democrats have been divided over pro-Israel resolutions like those that some other state legislatures have passed with near unanimity.
In the state House, a pro-Israel resolution that was introduced with bipartisan support is no longer expected to pass due to objections from some Democrats.
Abraham Aiyash, the Democratic floor leader in the chamber, strongly opposed the resolution.
Aiyash, who grew up in Hamtramck after his parents immigrated from Yemen, said that “if we’re going to condemn terror, we must condemn the terror and the violence that the Palestinian people have endured for decades.”
The state Senate opted to write its own resolution after the House’s stalled for more than a week.
It was introduced by the chamber’s lone Jewish lawmaker, Jeremy Moss, and passed easily with bipartisan support.
More.
Tenure track Economics professor shocked to find out that corrupt college administrators have been improving poor grades FOR DECADES without telling the professors
But for an administrator to then change those final grades—behind my back—simply to appease them? How could that possibly be justified?
The response from my department chair, who has been at the college for 17 years, floored me: “This has been occurring ever since I started at Spelman.”
“That’s corrupt,” I blurted out. [In a statement emailed to The Free Press, a Spelman spokesperson wrote that “The College, its administrators, and faculty, exercise appropriate judgment in the delivery of our exceptional learning and living activities in order to maintain consistency across Spelman’s campus.” Spelman declined to comment on any of the specifics in this story.]
More here.
The poor guy got fired in the end, for naively believing that the commitment to excellence meant grading fairly according to long-accepted standards.
Exact same thing happened to me . . . in 1988, at a so-called world class institution of higher learning, where it's all wink wink.
The process got turbocharged in the 1960s by the draft dodgers. They fled to college, or to Canada. Liberal institutions gave them a pass on admissions, and once there relaxed standards to keep them enrolled to escape being drafted. These ne'er-do-wells stayed in school as the Vietnam war dragged on. Many went on to grad school as standards weakened some more. Rinse and repeat.
They are the ones who went on to educate today's hordes of complete lunatics now populating college campi.
Standards were lowered everywhere quite quickly from the 1960s, including at elite small religious colleges by the 1970s where stubborn professors with standards were already then not being renewed, the polite way of firing them.
We are reaping what we've sown.
The rot set in a long, long time ago, and it reflects why the country is in the sorry state it is.
It can't be fixed. The country as we know it will have to collapse first.
Three semesters of Latin used to be required to get into Harvard, let alone graduate from it. That standard was already under attack in 1917 in the name of "science". The widespread requirement of three semesters of college Latin was gone by the mid 1960s. Now you will be hard pressed to find any college requiring any foreign language at all to graduate. Princeton is now infamous for eliminating Latin and Greek for a degree in Classics, you know, the study of everything Greco-Roman.
The process has its own inertia producing this history. It's inherent in the thing we call America.
Tell me, Bwana: What mean GDP, why important?
Bureau of Economic Analysis this morning here:
3Q2023 nominal GDP, first estimate: $27.6235 trillion
Nominal increase year over year in 3Q: 6.27%
Compound annual growth rate since 3Q2000: 4.375%
Compound annual growth rate 3Q1947-3Q2000: 7.275%
Underperformance from post-war, last 12 months: 13.8%
Underperformance from post-war, last 23 years: 39.86%
Current S&P 500 ~ 4175
Current ratio of S&P 500 to GDP: 151
Median ratio of same 1938-2019: 81
Current overvaluation of S&P 500 from median: 86.4%
Current fair value of S&P 500: 2238
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
It's remarkable how backward and unimaginative Elon Musk's thinking can be
How many tanks, guns, and drones can you make relative to the other side? That's what it comes down to. And it may be the case, if not now, in the future it probably will be, that a Russia-China-Iran alliance can outproduce the Western alliance.
Here.
Monday, October 23, 2023
US Treasury yields making new highs for this cycle as of Oct 19, 2023
Massive Treasury issuance to pay for massive pandemic spending has driven yields higher.
It's the law of supply and demand: Increase the supply of US Treasury debt and the price goes down.
Previously issued securities paying lower interest rates drop in price because they are much more plentiful in comparison with the new issues paying higher rates which investors demand.
Who wants 'em?
Banks are estimated to be stuck with these dogs in quantities approaching what the Fed has let roll off, which is what they also must do. The collateral backing banks, insurance companies, pension funds, et cetera et cetera et cetera, suffers.
The Federal Reserve Bank's role as a big buyer in the bond market has been curtailed since 2Q2022, removing its big price support role. As of 3Q2023 the balance sheet is down $768 billion as securities mature. That's about $51 billion rolling off per month, and no net buying to replace it.
The Fed has also raised the Federal Funds Rate to an average of 5.33 to combat inflation.
So yields have risen for such reasons to these records for this cycle to date, but it's all predicated on the US Treasury having to dilute the supply:
1MO 6.02 5/26/23 (debt ceiling disagreement)
3MO 5.63 10/6/23
6MO 5.61 8/25/23
1Y 5.49 9/27/23
2Y 5.19 10/17/23
3Y 5.03 10/18/23
5Y 4.95 10/19/23
7Y 5.00 10/19/23
10Y 4.98 10/19/23
20Y 5.30 10/19/23
30Y 5.11 10/19/23.
In the aggregate as of Oct 20 yields are up a net 22% year over year to an average of 5.25692 from 4.30846 when all the wizards of smart said they couldn't possibly go any higher without breaking something.
They're still saying that.
US pandemic debt orgy described as fiscal slippage lol
It's so indicative of our degeneracy how economic profligacy must not be described that way in this day and age where anything and everything is great, awesome, and epic but that.
Oh well, at least they still pay a modicum of respect with huge, swelled, and deluge.
If only all that cash were a tsunami, inundating the shore with ruinous inflation.
CNBC, here:
. . . investors are also pricing in surprising economic resilience alongside fiscal slippage.
The U.S. federal government ended its fiscal year in September with a fiscal deficit of almost $1.7 trillion, the Treasury Department announced on Friday, adding to a huge national debt totaling $33.6 trillion. The country’s debt has swelled by more than $10 trillion since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in the first quarter of 2020, prompting a deluge of fiscal stimulus to help prop up the economy.
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