Time may not heal all wounds, after all. One thing it does do is clarify. There was a time not all that long ago when 20 million sounded absolutely enormous. How quaint today. At the end of March, initial jobless claims in the US were surpassing that unthinkable level leaving everyone to hope it wouldn’t get much worse. Having blown [...]
The thing about PMI’s is they are all second derivative. The focus on fifty is misleading, beginning with the idea that these things can ever be so precise as to clearly delineate the exact moment between contraction and growth. When the indices are high, say like 60 or better, that simply means many more respondents are claiming to see increasing [...]
In a scene straight out of the Stalinist playbook, no one dared anything but to do their part pitching in with thunderous applause. Five hundred deputies from across China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region showed up at the regional “people’s” Congress in January 2018 to elect the delegates who would represent them and the region’s 25 million inhabitants at the National [...]
iTunes: https://apple.co/3czMcWN Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3arP8mY Google: https://shorturl.at/fpsEJ Alhambra-tube: https://youtu.be/Q4Jm0yTkUkQ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JeffSnider_AIP Twitter: https://twitter.com/EmilKalinowski Art: https://davidparkins.com/ [Emil's Summary] The 2020 economic recovery is shaping up to be the worse V since V, the 1980s American mini-series.In the mid-80s parents allowed their children to watch an innocent-looking television program titled V thinking it was some kind of Sesame Street offshoot. Imagine little Johnny and Suzy [...]
It’s now more than two months out from GFC2 and more importantly the Fed’s response to it. Why is Jay Powell’s reaction more important? Simple. Because it outlines what happens next. Had the FOMC been anywhere close to successful in anything other than convincing the media, GFC2 might’ve been a singular instance of disruption related to the non-economic shock of [...]
The missing piece so far is consumers. We’ve gotten a glimpse at how businesses are taking in the shock, both shocks, actually, in that corporations are battening down the liquidity hatches at all possible speed and excess. Not a good sign, especially as it provides some insight into why jobless claims (as the only employment data we have for beyond [...]
Another 2.1 million Americans have filed this week with their state governments in order to determine their eligibility for unemployment insurance. That brings the 10-week disaster total for these initial jobless claims to an enormous 40.8 million. How did it get to be so many, and why, as states are opening back up, is it continuing in the millions all [...]
It has to be a combination of confirmation bias and rationalizations. Not even the official story finishes up with the fairy tale ending. The “V” people seem to be ignoring what the most optimistic group is actually saying. And these optimists absolutely want it to be that way.It bears repeating the “V” case; that once the non-economic shutdowns are lifted, [...]
It’s a pretty simple question, at least when asked by a member of the American citizenry not already compelled by one bias or another. Did the 2009 “stimulus” bill (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; or ARRA) work? The answer depends upon who you ask, including breaking down along partisan lines. To Democrat Economists, it absolutely did. For their Republican counterparts, [...]
The numbers just don’t add up. Even if you treat this stuff on the most charitable of terms, dollar for dollar, way too much of the hole almost certainly remains unfilled. That’s the thing about “stimulus” talk; for one thing, people seem to be viewing it as some kind of addition without thinking it all the way through first.You have [...]
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