ADP surprised on the upside (143K vs 124K consensus):
Not sure what this means, but ADP is outstripping the official series, which is itself above the preliminary benchmark.
Figure 1: Private nonfarm payroll employment from CES (blue), preliminary benchmark (light blue), ADP-Stanford (green), QCEW (red), change from 2023M01, in 000’s, s.a. QCEW seasonally adjusted using X-13 in logs. Source: BLS, ADP via FRED, and author’s calculations.
Figure 2: Private nonfarm payroll employment from CES (blue), preliminary benchmark (light blue), ADP-Stanford (green), QCEW (red), change from 2023M01, in logs. QCEW seasonally adjusted using X-13 in logs. Source: BLS, ADP via FRED, and author’s calculations.
Bruce Hall has found someone dumber than EJ Antoni when it comes to economics. Peter St. Onge – bartender who pretends to be an economist after he gets really drunk!
Unreliable Job Data from Biden-Harris Clouds Economic Picture
https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/commentary/unreliable-job-data-biden-harris-clouds-economic-picture
This dumb rant starts off by telling us that inflation is still out of control. Yea right. And then:
“The latest data show job openings, a proxy for labor demand, crashed by half a million in a single month, falling to the lowest level since January 2021 and down 4.5 million in little more than two years.”
Well – job openings are still over 8 million:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/JTSJOL/#:~:text=Total%20Nonfarm%20Job%20Openings%20are%20measured
I was starting toi think Antoni had captured the title of dumbest man alive. But no – Bruce Hall still leads this competition!
Heritage Foundation: Our mission is to make the world a dumber place.
If you want people to believe things that aren’t true, you have to work at it. You have to supply “alternative explanations” to go along with “alternative facts”. Then, you give people an emotionally appealing reason to choose the lie over the truth. St. Onge, Antoni, Cass, Vance, Drudge, Kudlow – the all juice their “alternative” stories with outrage, with conspiracy theories, scorn, victimization. A Big Lie must be repeated endlessly, and these guys know it.
Here’s what Walter Langer, in his profile of Hitler for the OSS, said of the Big Lie:
“[Hitler’s] primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20200801092323/https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP78-02646R000600240001-5.pdf
Sound familiar?
So Brucie’s new economic guru Peter St. Onge actually does more than stupid Youtubes!
Are We Already in Recession?
https://www.profstonge.com/p/have-we-been-in-recession-for-years
Inflation: the Key to Recession
To give a flavor, the official inflation rate since Covid has been around 21%. But fast food menu prices — a go-to indicator for Foreign exchange investors — are up between 35% and 50%. People posting grocery receipts online say it’s actually more than 50%. The problem is if inflation was actually, say, 35% it means GDP hasn’t gone up at all since pre-Covid. It means it actually went down. Implying we’ve been in recession for nearly 5 years.
Gee – Peter has captured most of the stupid things Brucie baby has written. Let’s see. A price increase of 35% means real income has declined by 35%? Does this MORON not get that nominal GDP has risen by more than the price level. Also note those rising real GDP figures has already taken into account the difference between the increase in nominal GDP (which Peter ignores) as well as any alleged increase in the price level.
But also note that this lying clown takes the alleged price increase over a 5 year period as the annual inflation rate. I bet that made Brucie boy all excited but it is STOOPID. Of course BLS notes that the increase in CPI over this period is nowhere close to 35%.
I get bartenders sometimes drink on the job but this clown must have been drunk the entire period under discussion. Bruce Hall’s ideal economist!
If the ADP figure for September matches the BLS private hiring figure (it won’t) and the average for government hiring for the past 3 month of 20,000 holds for September (probably not), then the establishment survey gain for September will be 163,000. The 3- month average as of August was 116,000.
The things I missed when I skipped the VP debate!
JD Vance is wrong about climate science, experts say. It isn’t “weird,” it’s overwhelmingly accurate
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/jd-vance-is-wrong-about-climate-science-experts-say-it-isn-t-weird-it-s-overwhelmingly-accurate/ar-AA1rEQTt?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=ffdb7cd4b5ee43b09ec0c1f73fc82856&ei=12
During Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate between Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), Vance dismissed climate change as “weird science,” skeptically characterizing the scientific consensus about burning fossil fuels as “this idea that carbon emissions drive all the climate change.” Top climate scientists were unimpressed with Vance’s posturing. These included University of Pennsylvania climatologist Dr. Michael E. Mann, who wrote to Salon that he could not “stomach Vance’s constant lies and the lack of fact-checking,” from CBS debate hosts, adding that “the reality is that the world’s scientists say that carbon emissions cause climate change. Trump has dismissed climate change as a hoax. Denial of the threat to our civilization posed by climate change, alone, is disqualifying for the Trump-Vance ticket.” Expand article logo
“What he said was just completely wrong, but not a surprise,” Glenn “The Hurricane” Schwartz, said. He was a meteorologist for NBC’s Philadelphia affiliate until the 1980s and, analogous to the fictional tornado chasers in “Twisters,” Schwartz chased hurricanes and other extreme storms in real life. Schwartz added that there are three facts about climate change which cannot be denied: “Number one, carbon dioxide is increasing, which increases the temperatures of the earth. Number two, it’s us doing the increase. Number three, things will keep getting worse unless we start producing those three things.
Yea – JD is dumber than a retarded rock. But hiring Bruce Hall as his advisor on this issue? Now that is STOOOPID.
Yep. I can only repeat what I wrote above. What Vance is doing is how the Big Lie works.
https://ml-eu.globenewswire.com/Resource/Download/51b09aae-ecd3-4553-bbc9-e400896c6efe
A.P. Møller-Mærsk A/S
I’m providing a link to the 2023 Annual Report for this foreign based shipping company. The White House is trying to get such companies to increase wages noting that companies like these have been highly profitable.
Five-year summary on page 10 is on point. Profit margins in 2021 and 2022 were indeed very high. Not so much in 2023, 2020, or 2019. Maybe there is some analysis of shipping profits over a longer period of time but I have not found one.
Trump Refused to Approve Wildfire Aid Until He Learned Affected Areas Were MAGA: Report
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-refused-to-approve-wildfire-aid-until-he-learned-affected-areas-were-maga-report/ar-AA1rEZ8d?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=7304434faa65448385dc39038fceeb7b&ei=9
As the death toll from Hurricane Helene surpasses 200 people and the Southeast continues to reel from the disaster, Donald Trump is working overtime to politicize the tragedy into an attack against his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Despite governors from both political parties lauding of the Biden administration’s response, Trump is insisting the federal government has abandoned affected communities. Earlier this week, Trump baselessly claimed that “the Federal Government, and the Democrat Governor of [North Carolina are] going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas,” ahead of a visit to a disaster zone in Valdosta, Georgia. But for all of the former president’s posturing as a capable leader who would better handle the crisis, his record in the White House says otherwise.
According to a Thursday report from E&E News, in 2018 – as wildfires ravaged large swaths of California – Trump initially refused to approve aid to the state because he felt some of the affected regions didn’t like him enough. Mark Harvey, then Trump’s Senior Director for Resilience Policy on the National Security Council Staff, told E&E News, a subset of Politico, that the former president only approved the aid after being shown data proving that the affected counties contained a sufficient amount of his supporters. “We went as far as looking up how many votes he got in those impacted areas … to show him these are people who voted for you,” Harvey recalled. His account was backed up by former Trump White House Homeland Security Adviser Olivia Troy.
It’s not the only time Trump based his response to a national disaster on the politics of those caught in its wake. A 2021 report found that the Trump administration blocked nearly $20 billion in hurricane relief to Puerto Rico in the aftermath of 2017’s Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico. Trump publicly bashed San Juan’s mayor at the time – Carmen Yulín Cruz, who had been critical of Trump – as “incompetent,” and downplayed the severity of the storm that killed nearly 3,000 people. Last year, Florida Governor Ron Desantis in his memoir described speaking to Trump in 2019 after Hurricane Michael swept through northern Florida. DeSantis requested that Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) foot the entire bill for recovery efforts instead of the standard 75%. “This is Trump country – and they need your help,” DeSantis pitched Trump. “They love me in the Panhandle,” the former president said. “I must have won 90 percent of the vote out there. Huge crowds. What do they need?” Shortly after the conversation took place, Trump signed an executive order commanding the federal government to cover “100 percent of the total eligible costs” related to the hurricane response.
Not unusual for the out of state Trump crowd to salivate when wildfires hit California without any idea were the fires are burning. Classic example is the Dixie Fire that burned almost a million acres in 2021. The “lol libs” crowd had a field day admonishing the foolhardy residents who had not properly raked their properties while being more concerned with making California a Marxist paradise. They were positive the hedonists got what they deserved.
Problem? The counties most affected were Trump strongholds including Lassen (Trump 71%), Shasta (Trump 65%), Tehama (Trump 66%), and Plumas (Trump 57%), where the blaze was blamed on Gov. Newsom for not taking better care of the national forests that dominate the region.
Interesting too that the decimated flooded highways in the South have not been chronicled as state failures as has been the case here, particularly in mountain areas where mudslides often close roads for long periods with the same “lol libs” head shakers certain that Californians can’t do much right to protect its infrastructure.
NE California is sometimes referred to as Calibama. For good reason. Try telling that to the Trumpers , however, to whom Modoc (population 9,000) and Los Angeles counties are one and the same.
Melania Trump on abortion rights:
“It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government.”
https://thehill.com/newsletters/campaign-report/4914614-melania-trump-makes-abortion-rights-push/
“The news shocked political pundits and anti-abortion activists alike.”
That’s because pundits and activists have their heads stuck up their own backsides. Trump has been shying away from his success in ending abortion rights for millions of women, because the political cost of that success is so high.
In Trump world, gaining power and wealth are the only imperatives. There are no strongly- held princies. Anybody who doesn’t see that is staring at their own insides instead of the real world.
If these anti-abortion activists are so “shocked” then maybe they should decide not to vote for Trump this time. He conned you fools. He cons everyone.
The only core value Trump has is racism. Which of course is why Bruce Hall is so loyal to MAGA.
my bet is there are women in the trump orbit who have actually had an abortion.
Off topic – presidential prognostication:
I mentioned some time ago that presidential hostorian Allan Lichtman had predicted – provisionally – that Joe Biden would win this year’s presidential race. We’ll, a few weeks back, Lichtman made a final prediction that Kamala Harris will win:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/05/opinion/allan-lichtman-trump-harris-prediction.html
Lichtman bases his predictions on a list of 13 factors. If six or more are negative for the party which currently holds the presidency, the other party wins. If five or fewer are negative for the party in power, that party wins. Lichtman’s only miss was Al Gore, which he argues doesn’t count because of judicial interference – Gore won the majority of the popular vote.
Democrats gave up incumbency when Biden dropped out, but still have enough positive factors for Lichtman’s model to call a win. By the way, Lichtman includes recession among his factors, and accepts that there is no recession.
Off topic – the port strike:
Marketplace devoted a couple of minutes to the effect of the port strike on exports today. Thought I have a gander at export commodities. Here are soybean prices with market commentary:
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/soybeans
Not much evidence of prices being depressed by storage issues, as suggested by Marketplace. Frankly, Marketplace routinely comments on trade issues in ways that don’t match up with actual market conditions. They tell stories, so they solicit stories from contacts, but don’t do much to confirm those stories.
What’s true for soybeans is true for other farm commodities – down on the day, but not collapsing. Commodity exports may become a big feature of the port strike, but the strike is not yet the big driver of prices:
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodities
There was a run on toilet paper even though it is domestically produced. Weird. Strike averted!
Port Operators to Offer 62% Raises to End Dockworkers’ Strike
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/port-operators-to-offer-62-raises-to-end-dockworkers-strike/ar-AA1rFhOj?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=0ea66a9d8de8444a9b7ba45c9e5f79da&ei=7
U.S. port employers are preparing a sweetened offer with an almost 62% pay increase to get striking dockworkers back to work and reopen shuttered ports, according to people familiar with the matter. The offer, an increase from an earlier proposed raise of 50%, is aimed at getting the International Longshoremen’s Association to the bargaining table to negotiate a new contract covering ports from Maine to Texas. The White House has privately and publicly pressed the employers, which include large shipping lines and cargo terminal operators, to make a new offer to the union. They want the parties to find a way to end a work stoppage that could disrupt the movement of everything from bananas to BMWs.
The latest offer being discussed would raise the base hourly rate for ILA port workers from $39 to $63 over six years, the people said. One of the people said the offer is being made on the condition that dockworkers go back to work and agree to efficiency gains. The offer is less than the union demand for an increase of 77% over the term of the contract.
Getting closer!
Fury as Trump downplays severity of brain injuries suffered by 109 US soldiers: ‘What does injured mean?’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-iran-soldier-injuries-headaches-b2622742.html
Donald Trump is facing backlash for downplaying the traumatic brain injuries suffered by 109 U.S. service members after an Iranian ballistic missile attack in 2020. The Republican presidential candidate made the remarks at a campaign press event on Tuesday after a reporter asked him if he should have been “tougher” on Iran during his time in the White House following the attack that left troops injured.
“First of all, injured, what does injured mean?” Trump replied. “You mean because they had a headache? Because the bombs never hit the fort.”
More than a dozen missiles struck the al-Asad Air Base in Iraq on January 8, 2020. No U.S. service members were killed but approximately 109 were diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries. Twenty-nine of the injured soldiers received Purple Hearts in the wake of the attack.
Trump dodged the draft faking bone spurs. Trump called our soldiers suckers and losers. Trump equates traumatic brain injuries as mere headaches. The man is not fit to be dog catcher let alone commander in chief.
trump argues that under his watch, no wars. perhaps. but that does not mean what he implies. what it means is that other nations can attack us without ramifications. we are attacked, but no wars break out. trump is not the strong defender he claims to be. he is much more into appeasement.
“other nations can attack us”
As in Iran!
Trump downplays troop brain injuries from Iran attack as headaches
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/trump-downplays-troop-brain-injuries-from-iran-attack-as-headaches/ar-AA1rAIhO?ocid=BingNewsSerp
Former President Donald Trump downplayed the injuries of troops who suffered traumatic brain injuries following missile strikes against a U.S. base at the end of his time in office, referring to them as “headaches” at a campaign event in Wisconsin on Tuesday. Pentagon officials have said more than 100 U.S. troops were diagnosed with brain injuries following a missile attack at the Ain al-Asad base in Iraq in January 2020. The assault came in response to the American killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani in Iraq a few days earlier. While the missiles did not directly strike any U.S. forces, the barrage of strikes caused dizziness, sensitivity to light, nausea and other traumatic brain injury symptoms in dozens of troops stationed there, Defense Department officials said. In some cases, the effects lasted for weeks or months, and multiple troops had to be evacuated to Germany for medical treatment.
how can there be job growth when EVERTYBODY knows the US has been in recession since biden was elected!
gosh it is a bit like temperatures getting hotter and hotter for NO reason!
Dockworkers’ union suspend strike until Jan. 15 to allow time to negotiate new contract
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/dockworkers-union-suspend-strike-until-jan-15-to-allow-time-to-negotiate-new-contract/ar-AA1rFblg?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=e0c7dd6e81264e428e4c44f2e3e4a003&ei=13
The union representing 45,000 striking U.S. dockworkers at East and Gulf coast ports has reached a deal to suspend a three-day strike until Jan. 15 to provide time to negotiate a new contract. The union, the International Longshoremen’s Association, is to resume working immediately. Both sides also reached agreement on wages, but no details were given, according to a joint statement from the ports and union Thursday night. The union went on strike early Tuesday after its contract expired in a dispute over pay and the automation of tasks at the ports from Maine to Texas. The strike came at the peak of the holiday shopping season at 36 ports that handle about half the cargo from ships coming into and out of the United States.
Good news for the nation. And I bet there was a significant increase in wages which is good news for the workers. The Biden Administration comes through again!
Let’s keep in mind the spill-overs from wage contract settlements. Those in the same labor market who are not covered by the contract tend to enjoy higher wages, too. Higher wages lead to increased spending, which helps businesses in the region and their workers.
The contract only covers about 40,000 workers – not a big deal directly. The spill-over extends those benefits to many more thousands of workers and their families. The strike represented a big downside. The settlement, temporary for now, represents a small upside – seen in terms of the U.S. economy – and the avoidance a big downside.
Vance said the US has not constructed a nuclear plant in 40 years (since 1984). Gee these folks suggests otherwise:
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=30972#:~:text=As%20of%202016%2C%20the%20United%20States%20had%2099,was%20the%20first%20new%20reactor%20added%20since%201996.
As of 2016, the United States had 99 operating nuclear reactors at 61 plants across the country, with a capacity-weighted average age of 37 years. The oldest operating nuclear reactor in the United States was built in 1969. Watts Bar 2, which entered commercial service in 2016, was the first new reactor added since 1996. An additional four reactors are currently under construction.
Is JD lying or is DOE lying?