Saturday, August 24, 2019
Friday, August 23, 2019
Clueless AP article calls US economy resilient when it's been in the rut they fear is coming since 2007
The compound annual growth rate of real GDP since 2007 has been WORSE than for the same time frame of the Great Depression, yet AP is completely oblivious. The upside is when things really go to hell they'll still be.
Barely a year after most of the world’s major countries were enjoying an unusual moment of shared prosperity, the global economy may be at risk of returning to the rut it tumbled into after the financial crisis of 2007-2009. ...
The U.S. economy, now enjoying a record-breaking 10-year expansion, still shows resilience. American consumers, whose spending accounts for 70% of U.S. economic activity, have driven the growth.
Retail sales have risen sharply so far this year, with people shopping online and spending more at restaurants. Their savings rates are also the highest since 2012, which suggests that consumers aren’t necessarily stretching themselves too thin, according to the Commerce Department.
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Current allocations to retail and institutional money funds are up 22.2% vs. the 2012-2018 average
Current allocations come to $3 trillion vs. $2.454 trillion on average 2012-2018.
Foreign holdings of US Treasury securities hit $6.636 trillion in June 2019, driving down yields
Nobody asks why US debt securities are so popular.
People like Jeffrey Snider of Alhambra know why, but nobody listens to him.
The logic of thorough-going materialism: Since humans are nothing but animals, we might as well eat each other
Now that all objections to organ transplantation as a form of cannibalism have been effectively silenced, we're going all the way.
As Ann Coulter likes to say, Our new country's going to be great!
Meanwhile benchmark revisions to the quick and dirty monthly Establishment Survey indicate 501,000 jobs have to be SUBTRACTED through March 2019
That is expected to bring down 2018 job creation to roughly 181,000 monthly instead of 223,000.
I say, so what? 223,000 monthly wasn't indicative of a jobs boom anyway.
Jobs numbers under Trump are like Trump Steaks, overcooked.
Jobless claims in today's report are lower in all three categories than a year ago
Not by much but they are, so no evidence of a reversal this week as seen previously, which would be concerning during the high season for jobs.
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
That's funny, that's what Jesus said
But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
-- Matthew 15:24
More climate BS: July 2019 hottest month ever recorded
If that were true we should at the very least have felt the residual effects of that even if local conditions were not record breaking, but we didn't.
Here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, maximum temperature in July 2019 never even reached the mean maximum, which is 94 degrees F. We had zero, zip, nada days at or above the mean max.
Contrast that with the hottest July on record here going back to before the year 1900: July 1921. Maximum temperature that month hit 100, which was the 9th highest maximum on record and one of the ten days that month when maximum temperature was at or above the mean max.
Average temperature was a record 79.7 in July 1921, with cooling degree days setting a record at 465. July 2019 didn't even come close to these records. Average temperature ranked 15th at 75.4, and cooling degree days ranked 14th at 332.
The July with the highest maximum temperature in Grand Rapids was July 1936, when a record 108 was recorded, one of nine days that month at or above the mean max of 94. That month ranked 5th for cooling degree days at 390, and 5th for average temperature at 77.3.
Apparently everyone has already forgotten July 2012, the second hottest July on record here in Grand Rapids. It ranked 2nd for cooling degree days at 449, 2nd for average temperature at 79.2, and second for maximum temperature at 104, with eleven days that July at or above the mean max of 94. But July 2019 couldn't hold a candle to July 2012 for hot conditions, yet somehow it was the hottest ever . . . everywhere else.
The fact of the matter is the hottest Julys in Grand Rapids are a phenomenon of the distant past, with nine of the top fourteen for cooling degree days occurring before World War II. July 2019 ranked merely 14th in that list.
Ten of the top fifteen for average temperature also occurred before World War II. July 2019 ranked merely 15th in that list.
For maximum temperature July 2019 ranked tied for something like 72nd position.
Hottest July evah. Give me a break!
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
The author of Bronze Age Mindset and its review by Michael Anton both seem to miss its thesis actually unfolding in our time
To paraphrase Woody Allen (whom, I hasten to add, BAP does not
quote), life wants what it wants. What does it want? At the upper
reaches, among the higher animals (BAP is relentlessly hierarchical),
what it wants is mastery of “owned space.” “Owned space” is the most
important concept introduced in Part One and the key to understanding
the rest of the “exhortation,” if not necessarily the rest of the book.
BAP argues that life, fundamentally, is a “struggle for space.” All life
seeks to develop its powers and master the surrounding matter and space
to the maximum extent possible. For the lower species, this simply
means mass reproduction and enlarging habitat. For the higher animals,
it means controlling terrain, dominating other species, dominating the
weaker specimens within your own species, getting first dibs on prey and
choice of mates, and so on. BAP sees no fundamental distinction between
living in harmony with nature and mastering nature. All animals seek to
master their environments to the extent that they can, and the nature
of man, or of man at his best—the highest man—is to seek to master
nature itself. Not in the Aristotelian sense of understanding the whole,
nor in the Baconian sense of “the relief of man’s estate” via
technology and plenty; more to assert and exert his own power. Indeed,
BAP posits an inner kinship between the genuine scientist and the
warrior; he calls the former “monsters of will.” ...
Early modernity actually offered the higher types vast opportunities to
explore and conquer new space. Thus bugdom is not caused or defined by
science and technology. To the contrary: science and tech at their best
can form a kind of frontier that allows for man’s higher motives to find
vent when and where space is constrained. For BAP, science in modern
times is, or should be, a manifestation of the will to conquer space.
Sheesh, ever heard of SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic? The highest men are already there, diligently working to master heaven itself.
Stop the preening and get with the program.
Monday, August 19, 2019
Trend for precipitation in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has been much wetter since the 1960s
Mean annual precipitation up to 1960 had been 31.76 inches, but since then is 37.33 inches.
Marianne Williamson follower thinks her politics is inconsistent with her own stated religious beliefs
Though most of the local study group expressed support for Williamson and her ideas, political scientists are skeptical that she has much of a chance at the presidency and at least one student of the course has reservations.
“I do not agree with her politics,” said Jeff Stephens, 54, of Kingston in Ross County. “I hope people don’t come to our group or ‘A Course in Miracles’ hoping to find that agenda because it’s not political.”
Stephens feels that some of Williamson’s views don’t fit with the teachings of the course. For instance, her plan to pay restitution to the descendants of slaves is about going back to the past and correcting an error that happened decades ago, whereas the course teaches forgiveness and not living in the past, said Stephens, who has been studying the course for a few years.
“I don’t think she’s making a good representative (of the course) as I understand it,” he said. “She’s not telling people about the course, she’s talking politics.”
Sunday, August 18, 2019
Saturday, August 17, 2019
Self-hating, America-hating liberal Peter Fonda finally gets his death wish: of lung cancer at 79
Peter Fonda has wanted to die at least since 1969, when a loose-triggered good ole boy decided he had to kill the witness too, and blow Fonda's character Wyatt away with a shotgun off his motorcycle in the final scene of Easy Rider. Wyatt's partner Billy had the wrong hair cut, you see, and the bad Yankee manners of the wrong hand gesture to go with it, while Wyatt had the wrong flag painted on the gas tank of his chopper and helmet. The Yankee fu was answered with the rebel yells of a twelve gauge.
Fonda repeated the performance in 1974's little-remarked Open Season as the character Ken, when the father played by William Holden hunts Ken down and kills him. Ken is a sick-in-the-head Vietnam vet who otherwise appears to lead a normal life but abducts and abuses, then releases and hunts and kills humans two weeks every year for sport with his buddies. As young men before the war they had raped Holden's daughter. She had had a child as a result, raised by the Holden character, and ended up in a mental institution. The Yankee fu was answered with the rebel yell of a vigilante's hunting rifle.
What Fonda couldn't bring himself to do with a gun in real life, he did to himself with drugs. For one reviewer of his 1998 Don't Tell Dad: A Memoir, too much of it "is a catalog of dope smoked". All along the real fu was to himself.
Friday, August 16, 2019
If it's a number and it comes out of Rush Limbaugh's mouth, it's probably wrong
Today Rush Limbaugh corrected a caller about the Summer of Love, saying it was in 1968, not 1969.
Actually it was in 1967.
Rush also said the Beatles had already broken up by the summer of 1969, the summer of Woodstock, the 50th anniversary of which is happening right this very minute.
The break-up of the Beatles actually occurred Dec 31, 1970, when the band members John, George and Ringo first publicly confirmed it. The last photo of all of them together with Paul as a band was taken August 22, 1969, just after Woodstock had ended.
I know these things because I'm younger than Rush Limbaugh. The Beatles were YUGE to my segment of the Baby Boom generation, but not to his to the same degree.
But Rush gets lots of numbers wrong, about far more consequential things than these, as my readers know.
The only ones he doesn't get wrong are the ones that go in his pocket.
The only ones he doesn't get wrong are the ones that go in his pocket.
That's why we bought Alaska, dummy, firing from Greenland puts you down wind from the fallout
These damn Yankees haven't learned anything since McClellan.
Thursday, August 15, 2019
The left-wing Dayton, Ohio shooter should have just skipped the alcohol and anti-depressants, which cancel each other out, and stayed with the cocaine
Hey wait a minute, aren't drugs illegal in this country?
Notice how five of the seven 30-year bond yield dives are a feature of the recent period since the 2000 bubble
And notice how all the episodes of great stress are post-1986 tax reform.
The chickens . . . are coming home . . . to roost!
Jobless claims through 8/10/19 pop above year ago levels in both seasonally-adjusted and not-seasonally-adjusted
That's now the third time in recent months (May, June, August), a concerning sign given that full time employment usually peaks in 3Q. It's not encouraging to see such weakness at the strongest time of the year.
Obama's minions in Philly, where in 2008 he talked about bringing a gun to a knife fight, laugh at cops being shot
Obama Goes One on One, Battling ‘Just a Speechmaker’ Label:
He
has also been showing a more pugnacious side, commenting at a
Philadelphia fund-raiser Friday that he was prepared for a fight with
Republicans, saying, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a
gun.” That line, from “The Untouchables,” led the campaign of his
Republican opponent, Senator John McCain of Arizona, to cry foul and to suggest that hopes for an elevated dialogue were in danger.
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Jeffrey Snider: The whole global economy is in trouble, and it isn't because of a few billion in US tariffs on Chinese goods
Rather it is because hundreds of billions of dollars worth of liquidity keep disappearing since the Great Financial Crisis.
Treasury bonds are the most expensive they have been in over sixty years
All "asset" classes are near-record expensive: bonds, stocks, gold, housing, college education, health insurance policies . . ..
Cliff Asness, here:
So, the bottom line is, as measured by real bond yield, U.S. Treasury bonds are really frickin’ expensive. Measured by the slope of the yield curve they are really frickin’ expensive. But, measured by the average of these two simple variables, they are 60+ year just about record-low frickin’ expensive. This result is not caused by, but is certainly exacerbated by, the (perhaps) surprisingly uncorrelated nature of slope and real bond yield, thus making both so low and at the same time considerably more surprising.
Now that's what I call bi-partisanship: China attacks the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House
Notably missing from the attack is President Trump. None dare call him Quisling.
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Rush Limbaugh tries to sandbag his audience, claims guy FILMING himself calling Cuomo Fredo really believed his name was Fredo because Rush calls Cuomo that
If that's true, then Rush's audience is dumber than a million Fredos, which makes Rush pretty stupid for not thinking of that.
Obviously the guy didn't believe that Fredo was Cuomo's real name, otherwise filming the set up would have been completely beside the point. The point was to get the reaction on film.
Rush didn't invent the Fredo meme for Chris Cuomo. It's been out there at least since 2010 in New Yawk City, thanks to Curtis Sliwa.
The Fredos of the world unite
If Chris Cuomo were a Michael and not a Fredo, he would have punched that guy right in the kisser just like Buzz Aldrin punched that guy who called him a coward, a liar and a thief. But he didn't. He backed down, just like the guy hurling the insult backed down. This is snowflake America.
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