Detroit automakers have cut more than 20,000 U.S. salaried jobs as AI threat looms
Friday, May 15, 2026
There is almost nothing Athenian about China, nor Spartan about the United States
But here we are.
Does THE GRAUNIAD even know that Sparta won that war?
Does Xi?
Meanwhile "Make America Great Again" handed our adversaries the rhetorical cudgel of decline wielded by Xi against Trump.
America is great when it stands for human freedom, something Trump is too shallow to grasp. The very word strikes terror into the hearts of the Chicoms, and is our greatest weapon against them.
But under Trump America has betrayed freedom in Ukraine, and acted more like imperial Athens in the Persian Gulf than like Sparta.
The attack on Iran is looking more and more like the failed Sicilian Expedition every day.
Aftermath: Trump Is Wrecking the U.S. Military
If Xi wants to win, he'll act more like Sparta and let the real Athens destroy itself.
Honda to reverse EV missteps at a cost of $9 billion amid lost focus on its famed gasoline engines
Honda shares rise over 7% as investors shrug off first operating loss in nearly 70 years
... Honda swung to an operating loss of 414.3 billion yen ($2.61 billion) for the fiscal year ending March, compared to an operating profit of 1.2 trillion yen the year prior. Provisions made for its ailing electric vehicle business and related investments, competition from its Chinese rivals, as well as a U.S. tariff impact of 346.9 billion yen weighed on its earnings.
... As part of its efforts to reorganize its EV business, the automaker said it will cancel market launches and development of some EV models initially planned for production in North America. The Japanese automaker said it expects the restructure of its EV business to cost over $9 billion.
... Honda engines used by Aston Martin were found to be causing battery failures and in January the Japanese automaker was slapped with a lawsuit in Canada over a defect in the 1.5L turbocharged engine in three Honda models. ...
The good news is you can still get the 2-liter four cylinder gasoline non-turbo engine in the base Civic, MSRP $26,345, with a theoretical highway range of 508 miles.
Thursday, May 14, 2026
From JMIC Update 45: Bab-el-Mandeb Strait tanker transits average 13.42/day May 7-13, 2026
Strait of Hormuz 1.57/day.
BAM tanker transits aren't even up to 2022's average of 30/day. The crisis of the oil trade is not being significantly ameliorated by Red Sea operations.
Estimates continue to put 5 million barrels per day leaving Yanbu, much of it heading to buyers in east Asia.
Fujairah in the UAE exports shy of 2 million barrels per day, also to the east.
Iran's exports in April are said to be shy of 1 million barrels per day.
Kuwait exported nothing.
Iraq exported maybe 0.131 million barrels per day.
So 8.1 million barrels per day in April?
21.0 million barrels per day left the region in 2022.
Update 5/18/26:
IEA estimates 8 mb/day bypassing Strait of Hormuz, flows still far below pre-war levels.
Herr Kurt Schlichter's hit piece on Thomas Massie says Massie married a leftist after his long-time wife died in 2024, when she was actually a staffer for Senator Rand Paul
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| "No heat" Massie's 2021 Christmas Card Photo |
And Rand Paul once again strongly endorses Massie's re-election.
Good Riddance to the Awful Thomas Massie
... Before his wife sadly died young a couple of years ago, he was content to be a fringe weirdo with bad hair and no heat. Once she tragically passed away, he visited a hairstylist, married a leftist staffer 20 years his junior, and decided he needed to broaden his horizons, which meant helping the Democrats and shafting the GOP more openly than before. ...
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
Kevin Warsh confirmed as Fed chair 54-45 by the US Senate, takes over from Powell on Friday
Kevin Warsh wins Senate confirmation as the next Federal Reserve chair
... In the most divisive vote ever for a Fed chair, Warsh, 56, won confirmation to take over for Jerome Powell, who has served in the top leadership position since 2018 and whose term will expire Friday.
The Senate voted 54-45 to confirm Warsh, ending a months long saga that began in the summer of 2025 and included an extensive search for Powell’s successor. The vote was almost completely along party lines, with only Pennsylvania Democrat Sen. John Fetterman crossing over to vote for Warsh, who becomes the 11th Fed chair of the modern banking era.
Powell will stay on at the Fed as he has two years left in his term as governor. ...
CNBC doesn't really want to talk about how bad April's increase in wholesale prices was, doesn't mention the year over year increase to core, stripping out food and energy, at 5.2%
Wholesale inflation jumps 6% in April on annual basis, biggest increase since 2022
... The producer price index rose a seasonally adjusted 1.4% for the month, much higher than the 0.5% Dow Jones consensus forecast and the upwardly revised 0.7% March increase, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. This was the largest monthly gain since March 2022.
On an annual basis, the index was up 6%, the biggest increase since December 2022.
Excluding food and energy, the core PPI accelerated 1%, compared with the 0.4% estimate. ...
While much of the inflation move has been attributed to the war and President Donald Trump’s tariffs that were introduced a year ago, the PPI data shows the price pressures were broad-based. ...
I'll say.
Looks to me like producers giving us all the middle finger.
I expect new record high corporate profits.
Adjusted for consumer price index inflation since October 2019, a traditional American breakfast should cost you 29.4% more in April 2026, instead it's 54.9% more!
29.4% more is bad enough, right?
The ingredients for a traditional American breakfast in April 2026, adjusted for consumer price index inflation since October 2019, should cost $29.91.
Instead they cost $35.79, $23.11 plus 54.9%.
Menu: Bacon and eggs, whole wheat toast with butter, coffee with milk and sugar, and a glass of orange juice.
The Biden high for all this was $33.20 in January 2023.
The all-time high to date was in March 2025 under Trump at $37.67.
The April 2026 Trump price is still 7.8% higher than the Biden high three-plus years ago.
Tuesday, May 12, 2026
Power prices did not climb 61%: The consumer price index for electricity was up 6.1% year over year, and the average price of electricity was up 7.2% year over year
The Bloomberg headline linked to by Drudge meant that the rate of inflation for the consumer price electricity index at 6.1% year over year was 61% higher than the overall consumer price index rate of inflation of 3.8% year over year.
A different measure, the average price of electricity, climbed 7.2% year over year to a new high of 19.4 cents per kilowatt-hour.
It will be of little comfort to many to note that it could be worse.
While the price of a barrel of oil has far outrun inflation over the long haul, electricity has not. At 4.6 cents in November 1978, its inflation adjusted price today would be 22.73 cents.
Yes 6.1% is a rate 60.5% higher than 3.8%
Trump's approval rating average at Real Clear Politics falls to a new low 40.2%
Recent polls by Reuters/Ipsos and CNN have him at 36%, by Rasmussen at 42.
Overall consumer price index inflation came in at 3.8% yoy in April 2026, core cpi at 2.8% yoy
The overall rate of inflation in April 2026 at 3.8% yoy is 100% higher than the average rate of 1.9% yoy under Trump I.
The core rate in April 2026 at 2.75% yoy is 40% higher than the average rate of 1.965% yoy under Trump I.
Food inflation was 3.2% yoy in April 2026, but energy inflation was 17.53% yoy in April on top of 12.58% yoy in March.
The energy inflation is a self-inflicted wound by Donald Trump. It's almost like he thrills at the prospect of defeat.
Monday, May 11, 2026
US economic growth peaked during the Reagan administration because America is a debt-based economy and we turned our backs on the formula during it
The trend for the growth of the total universe of US debt, TCMDO or total credit market debt outstanding, rolled over after 1985, one year after GDP did.
TCMDO is the real money, almost $108 trillion at the end of 2025. In 1985 it was $9 trillion.
M2 was merely $22 trillion at the end of 2025.
TCMDO is the sum total of debt expansion throughout the sectors of the economy.
Historically, most people have experienced it this way.
You get a full time job, which itself was created by a business selling debt in the form of stocks and bonds in order to expand its operations and future profits, and you go buy a house, putting down $100k on a $500k property. The bank loans you the $400k through fractional reserve lending on a small portion of its reserves but secured by the house. That new money is created out of thin air but is actually represented by the "guaranteed" future income stream of your job for 30 years, because you're a smart, reliable guy who never misses a day of work. TCMDO expands, and expands some more each time this happens.
When the conditions disappear for full time job creation, the process slows down. You can see the decline in the growth of the economy in the decline of the growth of the debt. Yes, everything is still growing, but not as vigorously.
Full time as a percent of population peaked 26 years ago, in 2000, at 53.55%, but retested the 1975 low of 46.74% in 2010 and 2011 at 46.97%, back-to-back years in the Late Great Recession.
Housing strength persisted in the immediate post-Reagan period on the illusory basis of windfalls from massive ordinary income tax cuts combined with the demographic peaking of the 1957 Baby Boom turning 40 in 1997 driving demand, but the hollowing out of the economy had already begun with the move of 20,000 manufacturers abroad after the 1986 tax reform.
Early warning signs began flashing already during the Clinton era.
Clinton immediately raised taxes in 1993 after he promised not to raise them in 1992, began a long series of cuts to federal government employment, and gutted the US Navy.
Americans were already struggling at the time and ominously tapped housing equity to sustain their middle class standard of living. Owners' Equity in Real Estate averaged 70% 1982-1986 inclusive, but plunged ten points within a decade to 60% 1996-1999 inclusive.
Homes had become piggy banks, preparing the way for 1997, the year Clinton and the Republicans went further still and turned homes into mere commodities, which in turn prepared the way for the housing catastrophe of 2008. From 1997 a flood of 70,000 more manufacturers began moving out as globalization kicked into high gear and China gained admission to the WTO in 2001.
Almost no one today wants to say out loud how unpatriotic this whole business was.
Reagan tried to convince us that we know best what to do with our own money, and we promptly turned around and staked our fortunes on foreign investment, not domestic.
Libertarianism is a lie.
Today you will be hard-pressed to identify a major manufacturing concern with 100% of its operations in the US. Tesla is a standout (heavily subsidized by the federal government!), but other than that most of the businesses which remain patriotically committed to the American idea are pretty small beer compared with how it used to be.
The formerly domestic debt expansion was exported abroad, creating middle classes where none existed before, especially in East Asia, and doing so cost businesses A LOT less, the key attraction for them.
As a result, enormous profits accrued to the owners of capital while wage earners here struggled to maintain the American dream. Wealth inequality soared, and now our children are 40 before they buy their first home.
TCMDO grew at a compound annual rate of 8.355% 1945-1985, but at only 6.398% 1985-2025. The change from optimism to pessimism can be traced in the trend lines.
Continued growth of TCMDO at the former rate but after 1985 would have yielded TCMDO at the end of 2025 of $223 trillion, or 106% more "money" than we actually have.
$115 trillion is "missing", or at least something like that. We will never know for sure, but some of us can still imagine because we watched the great betrayal actually happen.
This is why I say socialism is the future, not because I want it or because I think it will work.
People are going to figure this out eventually, get angry, and do the wrong thing, just like we did during the Reagan administration.
Sunday, May 10, 2026
So-called libertarian Mackinac Center for Public Policy advocates for limiting local control of zoning laws, blames local governments for high house prices, homelessness, and out-migration as if Michigan were California
... Michigan needs to learn the lessons of other states. California allows strict local zoning and tries to solve its housing problems through large government subsidies. The result is sky-high housing costs, a large homeless population and people moving elsewhere. ...
Local governments aren't to blame for federal legislation which turned homes into HELOC piggy banks and mere commodities to be pumped and dumped to escape capital gains taxation.
Fewer than 775,000 people are homeless in the United States, most of them by choice because of mental illness and drug abuse. Meanwhile there are 149,006,000 total housing units in the United States, 15,305,000 of which are unoccupied.
Things are already changing enough to make Michigan more attractive as a place to live. Michigan is a net in-migration state for the first time in 30 years in 2025.
There are no compelling reasons to take away local control of zoning authorities, unless you want the freedom to turn quiet neighborhoods where people want to live into Airbnb hellholes like Austin, Texas where many no longer do.
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