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Latest Articles: Economy
Approaching the Bond Yield Event Horizon
Post Date: 2023-09-26 02:39:55 by Charles_Byrd
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I get asked for my opinions on what’s happening by members of the press pretty regularly. They don’t always make it into print, nor do i respond to them all. It’s a tough business so I don’t ascribe any malice to it. Some stories simply get stale. I was asked about two topics the other day — the potential government shut down’s effect on Ukraine aid and the FOMC meeting. I wrote up my comments and sent them off. While they didn’t make it into print these two issues are inextricably linked in ways beyond the obvious, money. So, I’m not leaving them on the cutting room floor. Click for Full Text!
Economics is really hard
Post Date: 2023-09-26 00:22:15 by Charles_Byrd
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Science writers like to suggest that anyone can understand the intuition behind theories such as special relativity and quantum mechanics, if only they will read this book, or that essay. Don’t believe them—I’ve tried. At best I get a bit of the intuition behind relativity, and none at all behind QM. Yes, I hear the words, but I don’t understand enough of the underlying physics and mathematics for the words to form a coherent picture in my mind. I’m too dumb. Some economists believe that the public can understand why protectionism is bad, or why price controls hurt consumers, if only the ideas are explained to them in clear language. I doubt it. Click for Full ...
Beware of Mistaking Artifacts for Economic Realities
Post Date: 2023-09-23 01:50:33 by Charles_Byrd
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America runs a trade deficit during some period – say, a month – whenever the dollar value of that period’s imports exceeds the dollar value of that period’s exports. Unfortunately, the name given to this situation – “trade deficit” – is a never-ending source of deep confusion, sometimes even among economists. A few years ago, Scott Sumner appropriately scolded some prominent economists for their shallow thinking about the so-called trade deficit. Specifically, Sumner noted that these economists mistake human-constructed accounting categories for real and essential economic phenomena. We can clarify Sumner’s concern by elaborating on one of his ...
Blame Bidenomics for UAW strike
Post Date: 2023-09-23 01:49:00 by Charles_Byrd
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If you want to understand why the United Auto Workers union is striking now, look at the three factories it chose to target for its first wave shutdowns. The General Motors plant in Wentzville, Missouri, makes the Chevy Colorado and the GMC Savana. The Ford plant in Wayne, Michigan, makes Ford Rangers and Ford Broncos. And the Stellantis plant in Toledo, Ohio, makes Jeep Wranglers and Jeep Gladiators. Click for Full Text!
Crime, inflation driving up auto insurance costs for average Americans
Post Date: 2023-09-22 00:59:36 by Charles_Byrd
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Auto insurance costs have surged in 2023, with companies raising rates to account for increased costs related to more accidents, higher incidents of theft and higher car prices and repair costs. Click for Full Text!
Treasury releases principles for net-zero carbon emissions targets for finance firms
Post Date: 2023-09-21 00:33:52 by Charles_Byrd
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The Treasury Department has released a new set of guidelines for financial institutions working to reduce their carbon footprint in the latest climate change push by the Biden administration. The principles, which are voluntary guidelines for firms with commitments to net-zero carbon emissions, were announced by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday during a speech in New York at the Bloomberg Transition Finance Action Forum. A net-zero commitment means reducing carbon emissions to zero, or removing as much carbon from the atmosphere as is added. Click for Full Text!
The Peculiar Power of Denial
Post Date: 2023-09-20 23:22:46 by Charles_Byrd
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Denial is scale-invariant and universal--we've all experienced in some way or another. By scale-invariant, we mean the individual, household, enterprise, city, state and empire all experience denial. Click for Full Text!
To Antitrust Enforcers, Consumers Are Irrelevant
Post Date: 2023-09-20 21:52:59 by Charles_Byrd
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Is antitrust enforcement good per se, no matter what its effect on consumers? Reading an August 26 New York Times editorial, one could easily conclude that the Times editors think so. Indeed, the content of the editorial is in tension with the editorial’s title. The title is “Americans Pay a Price for Corporate Consolidation.” You might think on that basis that the editors would point out how consolidation of corporations would create market power, causing consumers to pay higher prices. But you would be wrong. The editors explicitly reject the idea of judging mergers by their effects on consumers. There are powerful forces arrayed on their side, specifically the head of the ...
Ron Paul’s Heroic Struggle To End the Fed
Post Date: 2023-09-20 20:09:52 by Charles_Byrd
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Everybody knows Ron Paul’s heroic battle against the Fed. The Fed is at the center of all of the plots of the deep state to destroy us. Without its financial empire of fiat money, the deep state would not be able to function. But do you know how the slogan, “End the Fed,” forever associated with Dr. Paul, became popular? After Dr. Paul spoke to a student group at the University of Michigan, the audience was so charged up that a number of them took out Federal Reserve notes from their wallets and burned them. The demonstration attracted quite a bit of attention at the time. After that the slogan took off. Everybody was saying “End the Fed!” Dr. Paul gave a succinct ...
5 Ways America Can Pursue a 'Pro-Worker' Agenda
Post Date: 2023-09-20 20:05:57 by Charles_Byrd
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I was born in the Soviet Union, sometimes associated as a “worker power” paradise, where all aspects of work were regulated under the principle that every Soviet citizen must have a good, meaningful job that pays decent wages. Loosely, that meant a job was guaranteed by the government, there were rigid pay standards for each profession, it was impossible to get fired (which inevitably meant there was less job mobility), and the pursuit of income from self-employment was strictly prohibited. This latter prohibition on work is what sent my grandfather to jail for nearly a decade when he tried to earn more income by making and selling hats. Three decades later, and several thousand ...
Stories to Watch: Unsustainable Fiscal Policy
Post Date: 2023-09-19 18:45:46 by Charles_Byrd
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Maybe countries can live with today’s high debt ratios, and maybe they cannot. The problem, which the authors mention briefly but do not address, is that in the absence of significant policy changes, the outlook—at least in the U.S.—is for debt to rise exponentially, because of demographics. The ratio of elderly dependents to working-age people just keeps heading higher, and health care spending just keeps rising faster than inflation. Can inflation itself cure the debt problem by enabling the government to pay back debt in cheaper dollars? Arslanap and Eichengreen say that the consensus from many studies is not favorable. Click for Full Text!
Playing with Official Inflation Statistics: An Example from Germany
Post Date: 2023-09-19 18:35:57 by Charles_Byrd
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The Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) consists of 12 subindices, which are weighted according to their shares in total household expenditures. If, for example, food and non-alcoholic beverages (subindex 1) account for 15% of expenditures, they should also be given a weight of 15% in the overall index. In this way, each expenditure category would be given the importance it has for an average household. This is the claim of official statistics. But here, too, as so often, aspiration and reality diverge. In Germany, the traditionally largest subindex covers housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels (subindex 4). It has always accounted for more than 21% of the overall index ...
Here's Why Housing Is Unaffordable for the Bottom 90%
Post Date: 2023-09-18 02:20:48 by Charles_Byrd
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This is the direct consequence of the Federal Reserve's decades of unprecedented stimulus: extremes of wealth and income inequality that gave the wealthiest households the means to bid up housing to the point it's no longer affordable to the bottom 90%. The superficial conclusion that the reason why housing is unaffordable is a scarcity of housing misses a key dynamic in supply and demand: who has too much money and where do they park it?? Click for Full Text!
Currency Wars Versus Gold Standards
Post Date: 2023-09-18 02:06:22 by Charles_Byrd
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Russia and the Saudis are driving up oil and diesel prices. But these moves are likely to undermine the rouble more than they undermine the dollar, euro, and other major currencies. Therefore, higher energy prices will rebound on the Russians this winter: if they shiver in Germany, they will freeze in Russia. If the dollar is king of the fiats, the rouble is just a lowly serf. There is little doubt that Putin and his advisers are aware of this problem. Plan A was to introduce a new gold-backed BRICS currency which might be expected to weaken the dollar and euro relative to the rouble. Plan B was more drastic: to back the rouble itself with gold. This is the financial equivalent of dropping ...
Price Controls Have Been Failing for 4,000 Years—but Humans Still Won't Learn
Post Date: 2023-09-16 00:59:21 by Charles_Byrd
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In 1892 the French archaeologist Henri Pognon made a historic discovery a few dozen miles northeast of Baghdad: a massive tell that held the ruins of the ancient city-state Eshnunna. Though it was not excavated until decades later by another archaeological team led by Dutch Egyptologist Henri Frankfort, the tell was one of the great finds of the century, revealing secrets of a Mesopotamian city that had been hidden for millennia. Click for Full Text!
Welcome to the Real Estate Industry Apocalypse
Post Date: 2023-09-13 03:40:48 by Charles_Byrd
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Higher interest rates are absolutely strangling the real estate industry, and there is no relief in sight. The sudden shift from a very low interest rate environment to a much higher interest rate environment has paralyzed sales. As I have discussed previously, very few homeowners that are currently locked into a mortgage at a low interest rate want to sell, because buying a home to replace the one that they are selling would mean taking on a mortgage at a much higher rate of interest. And millions of potential home buyers have been chased out of the market because of the exceedingly high mortgage payments that they would be facing if they pulled the trigger on a purchase right now. So ...
More Americans Taking Second Jobs, Part-Time Work As Inflation Continues To Rage
Post Date: 2023-09-10 00:58:02 by Charles_Byrd
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An increasing number of Americans are taking up part-time work and even getting second jobs as worsening economic conditions such as high inflation have chipped away at their finances, according to experts who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation. The median real weekly earnings for Americans are down 2.1% since the first quarter of the Biden administration, with data from August showing a spike in the unemployment rate and a job market that is beginning to cool, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Due to wages failing to keep up with inflation and debt levels increasing, workers are increasingly taking part-time jobs and even second jobs in order to make ends meet, ...
We're Living in a Neofeudal Bubble
Post Date: 2023-09-09 01:22:35 by Charles_Byrd
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If you listen to conventional economists, everything's rosy: thanks to the expansion of alt-energy like wind and solar, energy is getting cheaper, batteries will power the new global economy, we're getting smarter -- just look at the rising number of advanced college degrees, wages are finally growing, inflation is trending down, household balance sheets and corporate profits are strong, debt loads are not an issue yet and GDP is rising. All this happy news is backed by statistics, of course, but there's one little problem: all the conventional cheerleaders are living in a bubble of like-minded elites who are insulated from the neofeudal realities of life in the real world. ...
Proof That Bidenomics Has Been a Catastrophic Failure
Post Date: 2023-09-09 00:55:46 by Charles_Byrd
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Joe Biden just can’t quit fibbing. On Labor Day, he traveled to Philadelphia where he delivered a speech touting the success of “Bidenomics”. Who does he think he is fooling? The American people aren’t buying that nonsense. They know that prices are out of control at the grocery store. They know that the cost of living has been rising much faster than their paychecks have been. They know that high interest rates have made it much harder to buy a home. And they can see that lots of people are starting to lose their jobs. The truth is that Joe Biden’s time in the White House has been an economic nightmare, and it appears that conditions are likely to get even worse ...
Happy Labor Theory of Value Day
Post Date: 2023-09-09 00:43:45 by Charles_Byrd
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Y’all know how much I dislike commies. Labor Day, in particular, is one of my biggest pet peeves. It’s literally my least favorite holiday, right up there with Presidents’ Day. By contrast, I’m a huge supporter of Thanksgiving. We should spend our days of rest being thankful for what we’ve achieved and not feeling entitled to something we didn’t earn. That’s the essence of Labor Day, a day designed to reinforce the cultural divide between the entrepreneur and the people he employs. Click for Full Text!
Hedging the End of Fiat
Post Date: 2023-09-05 23:13:24 by Charles_Byrd
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It is slowly coming clear that the fiat dollar’s hegemony is drawing to a close. That’s what the BRICS summit in Johannesburg is all about — rats, if you like, deserting the dollar’s ship. With the dollar’s backing being no more than a precarious faith in it, it is bound to be sold down by foreign holders. Being only fiat, it could even become valueless, threatening to take down the other western alliance fiat currencies as well. How do you protect your paper wealth from this outcome? Some swear by bitcoin and others by gold. Click for Full Text!
“Mad Max” Conditions Are Coming
Post Date: 2023-09-05 23:01:24 by Charles_Byrd
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How far would you go to feed your family? Hopefully that is a question that you will not have to answer any time soon, but right now we are seeing millions upon millions of people become more desperate as economic conditions rapidly deteriorate and food costs soar. At this point, most Americans are just barely scraping by from month to month, and in poorer countries on the other side of the world there are people that are literally starving to death. As I have detailed previously, the UN has reported that 2.4 billion people did not have enough food to eat last year, and 900 million of them were facing severe food insecurity. Sadly, those numbers will inevitably be even higher for 2023. A ...
A “Prolonged Freeze” Has Descended Upon The U.S. Economy
Post Date: 2023-08-30 22:56:27 by Charles_Byrd
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The latest numbers are horrible, and they are going to get even worse if the Federal Reserve pushes interest rates even higher. We were warned that high rates would have an enormous negative impact on the economy, and that is precisely what has happened. Layoffs are way up so far this year, the commercial real estate market is absolutely imploding, and we are witnessing things happen in the housing market that haven’t happened in more than a decade. For example, last week it was revealed that sales of existing homes have fallen to a level that we have not seen since 2010… Click for Full Text!
Food prices expected to rise through 2024
Post Date: 2023-08-30 22:47:15 by Charles_Byrd
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Recently released federal pricing analysis from the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that food prices will continue to rise through 2024. The USDA pointed to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index released earlier this month, which showed consumer prices overall rose 3.2% in the previous twelve months. Food prices, though rose more quickly at 4.9% during the same time. Click for Full Text!
Fed chair signals more interest rate hikes could be on the horizon
Post Date: 2023-08-25 21:33:37 by Charles_Byrd
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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell raised the possibility of more interest rate hikes in prepared remarks Friday as inflation remains above the Fed’s target rate. Powell hinted that the Fed will raise interest rates in the future if factors like high inflation, a hot labor market and sustained economic growth persist, according to a speech given by Powell at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium. Interest rates have been raised 11 times since March 2022 in an effort to fight inflation, bringing the federal funds rate within a range of 5.25% and 5.50%, the highest rate since January 2001. Click for Full Text!
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