The only Republican with the courage to say No was Mitch McConnell.
The lunatics control the asylum.
Thursday, February 13, 2025
Thirteen paragraphs in we learn that last month's wholesale price headline was, well, total fiction
Which means that this headline is what then?
Producer prices report points to softer Fed inflation measure than feared:
A gauge of wholesale prices rose more than expected in January ... Over the past year, the all-items PPI increased 3.5%, well ahead of the central bank’s objective. ...
“Wholesale price growth came in slightly higher than expected for January, and the read for December was adjusted upward,” said Elizabeth Renter, senior economist at personal finance site NerdWallet. “In other words, inflation at the producer level remains high, and one concern is that this inflation could ultimately be passed along to consumers.”
Revisions to the December numbers also complicated the inflation picture, with the gain now put at 0.5%, compared with the 0.2% increase previously reported.
Last month's headline: Inflation watch: Wholesale prices rose 0.2% in December, less than expected.
As usual, the truth is under the hood of the polished headline, or maybe next month's polished headline.
Nothing looks soft to me in the measures shown below, which are the not-seasonally-adjusted ones.
Overall producer prices are up 0.7% in Jan 2025, and 3.5% year over year. Core producer prices are up 0.5% in Jan 2025, and 3.6% year over year. At least until next month.
The billionaires never say, Raise taxes now or face an economic heart attack
The word "tax" appears nowhere in this story.
Ray Dalio is worth $19 billion.
“Make sure that you really know what you’re doing and you’re practical,
and do it on … the conservative side, because you know, how much can the
cutting actually be?”
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Elon Musk is the biggest federal government teet sucker in history, the wealthiest man in the world on the backs of American taxpayers, and the biggest hypocrite about it
The hypocrite:
The grifter:
Over the last decade, Musk's companies SpaceX and Tesla were awarded at least $18 billion in federal contracts, according to spending data -- with SpaceX winning more than $17 billion worth of contracts since 2015.
And don't forget the benefit of the government coin in the till for every Tesla purchased:
The beer-swilling surrender monkeys of the Trump administration have just caved to Putin
The art of the cave.
The art of the deal would drop NATO membership for a return of the occupied lands, but no, let's concede EVERYTHING for . . . what exactly?
A cessation of hostilities?
These people are a joke and a disgrace.
In Jan 2025 the average price of utility natural gas is 49% more than the 2017-2020 average
The average price of utility natural gas was $1.04 per therm 2017-2020.
In Jan 2025 it costs $1.55, 49% more.
Since about 10% of natural gas production is diverted to LNG export for big profits, most of the increase is related to diversion of natural gas from heating to electricity production because of the lunatic policy of retiring massive amounts of coal electric generation capacity.
It makes heating your home much more expensive, and keeping the lights on much more expensive at the same time.
Thanks for nothing, green energy assholes. It's 22 degrees F and snowing in Grand Rapids, MI.
Nine basic foods posting new all time high average prices in January 2025 according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank
Round steak $8.28/lb
Eggs $4.953/doz
Frozen OJ $4.48/12oz.
Coffee $7.019/lb
Sugar $1.011/lb
Ice Cream $6.459/half gallon
Steaks, all $10.905/lb
Table wine $14.035/liter
Beer $1.813/pint
Everybody's favorite food inflation indicator, eggs, made another new all-time record high average price in January 2025: $4.953/dozen
Sorting for the 100 largest flocks of egg-layers affected by H5N1 bird flu since 2022 which have had to be destroyed, as of this morning I count in excess of 21 million chickens destroyed to stop the spread so far in 2025 alone.
At 3.258% in Jan 2025, the rate of core cpi inflation year over year is still 65.8% worse than the annual average 2017-2020
At 3.258% in Jan 2025, the rate of core cpi inflation year over year is still 65.8% worse than the annual average 2017-2020.
The rate has been going sideways since Jul 2024, seven months.
The Fed has failed, the Congress has failed, and the Executive has failed. They all suck at their jobs, which is to say they're doing great! They're bloodsuckers after all.
All figures are the not-seasonally-adjusted figures.
The 2017-2020 average was 1.965%.
The 2024 average was 3.4%.
The 2021-2024 average was 4.48%.
The percent change in Jan 2025 was +0.56986%, which since Jan 2021 is the third worst Jan out of four.
Tuesday, February 11, 2025
Steve Bannon pleads guilty to one count of first degree scheme to defraud in New York in plea deal to avoid trial and jail
Trump pardoned Bannon on the federal charges literally at the 11th hour in January 2021, but not Bannon's partners, who all went to the big house.
New York State went after Bannon separately.
... Bannon and three other men were accused of pocketing donations, while
the group managed to build a paltry three miles of fencing along the
southern border. ...
GOP trainwreck Nancy Mace accuses ex-fiance in US House floor speech, adultery with whom almost made her late for a prayer breakfast in 2023, of recording sex acts with her and others without their consent
Rep. Nancy Mace accuses ex-fiancé and associates of assaulting her and raping others in House speech
... Saying she was going “scorched earth,” Mace detailed how, in November
2023, she says she “accidentally uncovered some of the most heinous
crimes against women imaginable. ..."
The prayer breakfast incident occurred in July 2023:
Nancy Mace tells prayer breakfast she told fiancé ‘we don’t got time for that this morning’
Maybe she'll change it to an "S" now?
Monday, February 10, 2025
Literally the very last line in this story
Trump announces plan to stop making new pennies, citing production costs
In the U.S., discontinuing the penny entirely may require congressional approval.
I got Elon Musk's Grok to admit that the penny underpins the dollar system and allows it to be more precise, and that for saving $192 million on annual penny production, reprogramming all the accounting software would conservatively cost $5.5 billion LOL
Eliminating the penny would take only 28.6 years to pay for itself ha ha ha ha ha.
The cash consumer will pay the cost of the Trump-Musk penny-elimination gambit: Is it the harbinger of a coming cashless tyranny?
 |
| "The Amish have been galvanised to head to the polls and turn the battle ground red." |
The little guy voted for Trump, so naturally Trump is going to screw the little guy, the Amish in particular.
And not mentioned in the story below is the deep resistance to eliminating cash among the denizens of America's survivalist communities. They see this as a control issue, and a potential threat to freedom because you control the cash in your pocket, but not the digital currency in your account. Cross the authorities somehow, and your account can be wiped out with a keystroke.
We already have experienced lawful gun owners and gun businesses being de-banked over gun ownership, among other culture war issues contested by liberal elites using economic coercion.
Meanwhile The UniParty has devalued the 1913 dollar to three cents. If you've only got one, eliminating the penny means you've now got bupkis.
How does the observation go? It's always the Republicans who actually advance the liberalism which the people resist when the Democrats are in control.
Every. Damn. Time.
To the extent rounding up occurs more frequently than rounding down, cash consumers would be paying the price for the cost efficiency Trump and Musk are seeking, said Ajay Patel, a professor of finance at Wake Forest University School of Business. ...
. . . people at the bottom of the economic ladder will probably feel the penny pinch the most.
“The individuals paying for this benefit will be those who purchase products and services using cash and will continue to do so going forward because they are either unbanked or unable to access debit or credit cards or a digital wallet,” Patel said. ...
Laura Maike, of Burton, Ohio, notes that the Amish will feel the pinch right now.
“Here in Northeast Ohio’s Amish country, we still use pennies regularly,” Maike said of her area, which includes thousands of generally cash-using Amish. “How would this work for cash-only transactions? It would be impossible to give exact change as the purchaser or seller.”
More.
Meanwhile, there is real money: $2,905.98 the ounce, the seventh record gold price this year
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| gold content: about $542 at today's high |
Gold prices jumped more than 1% on Monday to hit a record high, as safe-haven demand surged on fears of a global trade war after U.S. President Donald Trump announced new tariff plans.
Spot gold was up 1.3% to $2,897.99 per ounce after hitting a record high of $2,905.98 earlier in the session — its seventh record this year.
U.S. gold futures rose 1.2% to $2,923.1.
“The precious metal is set to retain its upward bias, as long as President Trump’s policy threats continue to stoke fear and uncertainty through global financial markets,” said Exinity Group chief market analyst Han Tan.
More.
PM Update:
Spot gold surged 1.5% to $2,903.53 per ounce after hitting a record high of $2,911.30 earlier in the session.
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