Also, "weakest consumer spending since 2003".
And, 46 consecutive months of industrial production at or below 8%, "unprecedented for modern China".
Jeffrey Snider, here.
Friday, June 15, 2018
Thursday, June 14, 2018
Australian snowflakes in Afghanistan see a Nazi flag, fear PTSD or something
Obviously it was a false flag operation. The Aussies were just trying to have a little fun and convince the Taliban they were friendlies.
Fake news: Drudge contributes to the false boom narrative
Drudge links to a Zero Hedge story, which doesn't use the word "boom". But Zero Hedge doesn't get it right, either. It calls the May 0.8% monthly percentage "surge" in retail sales "the biggest since January 2017" absent the hurricane surge in September 2017. Not true: The actual 0.76% spike in May 2018 was bested by November 2017 at 0.79%. They both round to 0.8%.
But was the 0.8% significant? The only way to know is to look at what has happened in May in the past, and from that we conclude that May 2018 was obviously up but unremarkably so. We did better in May 2008 and 2009 for crying out loud, in the middle of a deep recession, which just proves it takes a while to get people's attention, even after you beat them in the head with a 2 X 4, multiple times.
The bottom line is retail is struggling over the long haul. The trend isn't up even a full half point after 18 years.
Expect Rush Limbaugh to trumpet the fake news nonetheless.
Here's an extreme he hasn't thought of: Maybe try paying more than "above minimum wage"
The minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, but low-skilled jobs in Michigan start at $10.00 an hour, and pay even higher than that for competent, dependable people. The median wage for a production operator for a local company near me situated here just across the lake from the one in Manitowoc mentioned in the story below commands $13.57 an hour.
From the story here:
Mike Fredrich shows off unmanned presses in his Manitowoc, Wisconsin, company. They're ready to start production at MCM Composites, a 55-person enterprise that makes custom thermoset molding. The only problem? Fredrich has no one to operate them. "These tools are heated to 300 degrees," he said. "But we're not running them. Had we had the people for the first shift, we could have been running this all day. But we don't, so they sit here heated, ready to go, with no action." Fredrich said the business has gone to extremes to try to find the 15 additional employees it needs. But he's had little success.
"There are no workers, but there's a huge demand. The economy has picked up, but the market is so thin, that we just can't find them. We've gone to extraordinary means to find people that will actually work, including going to the local county jail and recruiting people to work from inside the jail," Fredrich said. ...
Fredrich is also looking for a core staff of his own — low-skilled laborers he's willing to train and pay above minimum wage. "What they need to be able to do is come to work on time every day, pay attention to what they're doing, take instruction well, and just put in an honest day's work," he said.
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
Tuesday, June 12, 2018
Trump may have kept the issue of US troops in South Korea separate from the North Korea talks, but he still wants them out
Removing US troops from the peninsula will only give China what it wants. A robust US presence in South Korea, Japan and Guam helps ensure the security of Taiwan, not simply the security of South Korea. The end game is Taiwan. Trump is misguided to think otherwise.
Quoted here before 6:30 this morning:
“I want to bring our soldiers back home,” Trump said, although he added that it’s “not part of the equation right now.” Then he said: “We will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should. But we’ll be saving a tremendous amount of money. Plus, I think it’s very provocative.”
Trump's determination eventually to remove US troops from South Korea isn't what the South wants or the North demands
From the story here in early May:
The South Korean government reiterated this week that the troops were still needed and would not be pulled out as a result of a peace treaty with North Korea. ...
Mr. Kim recently declared, through South Korean officials, that he would drop the North’s longstanding insistence that American troops leave the peninsula. Some experts argue that watching American soldiers depart is far less important to him than winning relief from economic sanctions.
The Clapperism Laugh of the Day: FBI seizes reporter's records in order to protect her
Unnamed sources say the records were suspected to be highly toxic weapons of mass destruction.
Monday, June 11, 2018
Slow wage growth remains a mystery to economist Noah Smith
Here.
And they call economics a science.
It's not a mystery if you question your presuppositions, for example that the economy is strong, and that the unemployment rate tells you something meaningful. But that might be too much to ask of an economist.
Strong growth is relative. Economic growth in the post-war began with a big bang and has been cooling off ever since. Compared to the beginning, we're half as robust today. So the economy is not strong, just operating in concert with inertia.
The unemployment rate is very low, but only because so many people have dropped out of the labor force at the same time that the slowest jobs recovery in the post-war has occurred. The low unemployment rate is an artifact of this concurrence.
Presently there are over 16 million people unemployed, underemployed, and not in the labor force who want to work. That's why wages aren't growing. We're still flush with labor, and business knows it.
You can be replaced.
And they call economics a science.
It's not a mystery if you question your presuppositions, for example that the economy is strong, and that the unemployment rate tells you something meaningful. But that might be too much to ask of an economist.
Strong growth is relative. Economic growth in the post-war began with a big bang and has been cooling off ever since. Compared to the beginning, we're half as robust today. So the economy is not strong, just operating in concert with inertia.
The unemployment rate is very low, but only because so many people have dropped out of the labor force at the same time that the slowest jobs recovery in the post-war has occurred. The low unemployment rate is an artifact of this concurrence.
Presently there are over 16 million people unemployed, underemployed, and not in the labor force who want to work. That's why wages aren't growing. We're still flush with labor, and business knows it.
You can be replaced.
Republican corporate tax cuts = record stock buybacks in May 2018 = corporate insiders selling to profit BIGLY
From the story, "Corporate executives are using stock buybacks to pad their own compensation, according to the SEC", here:
Indeed, buybacks totaled $178 billion during the first quarter, hit a record $171.3 billion in May alone and have seen $51.1 billion announced so far in June, according to market data firm TrimTabs. At the same time, insider selling has totaled $23.6 billion.
Meanwhile Challenger, Gray & Christmas reports total hirings in the first five months of 2018 are down 48% from the first five months of 2017.
The Republican tax cuts are working out as predicted: Failing to provide jobs while enriching elites.
Texas alone has 251,000 criminal aliens who aren't good people, committing 663,000 serious crimes since 2011
From the story here:
According to the DHS and the Texas Department of Public Safety, over 251,000 criminal aliens have been booked into local Texas jails between June 1, 2011, and April 30, 2018. They have been charged for a total of 663,000 offenses including:
1,351 homicides;
7,156 sexual assaults;
9,938 weapons charges;
79,049 assaults;
18,685 burglaries;
79,900 drug charges;
815 kidnappings;
44,882 thefts;
4,292 robberies.
The Answer: Because they are slaves
The Question: Why middle-aged women with kids make the best employees
"... the group that is most discriminated against when it comes to jobs."
Reihan Salam: Permanent normal trade relations with China fostered its tyranny
Well duh. We sell them the rope to hang us with, but first they hang their own.
From the story in The Atlantic, here:
What might the world have looked like had the U.S. never granted PNTR to China? One possibility is that China would have pursued an economic strategy built around fostering indigenous entrepreneurship and bettering the lives of its own workers, as it did in the 1980s. Instead, Beijing chose to transfer wealth from ordinary Chinese citizens to its politically powerful export sector, a path made possible by PNTR. China might very well have become just as rich by embracing a more balanced and humane approach to development. Doing so, however, would have required that its central government surrender a measure of control to its citizens. Rather than foster liberalism and openness in China, I suspect PNTR did exactly the opposite—creating the conditions for China’s central government to exert tighter control over the Chinese populace.
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