341–350 of 514 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"key goods" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement.
"Biden years" is doing even more work. The suicide cultists generally ignore the trillions in helicopter money that was dumped into the economy under Trump's "watch", right when we were also dealing with supply shortages. It took a few years for the economy to start moving and that new money to go from asset prices into consumer prices, right in time for short memories to blame JOEBIDEN.
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The good news is that these economic problems are entirely the result of bad policies and can be reversed. If we were to also raise broad based taxes, it would allow the Fed to cut interest rates, stoking long term investment, loosen up the housing market (which would allow more people to move), lower the Federal deficit, and improve the trade balance (as if that actually mattered).
The bad news is that we're only one year into the 4 years of bad policy(if we're lucky) and the policy itself will probably continue to get worse
If democrats don't retake congress we are cooked. This means people are okay with whatever is happening.
If unemployment continues to rise, and the one-time impact on prices of tariffs leads to self-reinforcing high inflation, we'll have stagflation : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation I sure hope not , because stagflation would be extremely unpleasant for everyone. Central banks like the Federal Reserve would be forced to raise interest rates, to put stress on businesses and consumers, so businesses find themsel…
That's just not happening, no matter what happens.
The President is obsessed with lowering rates, because it personally enriches him, regardless of how it affects the economy. The cronies he has in line to replace Powell and the SCOTUS seeming like they'll back his unlawful removal of the Fed governors he doesn't like, means the independence of the Fed is guaranteed dead in, at most, 2026.
The businesses that should be pushing back just... Aren't? 5 billionaires just had a foot-kissing session with Trump. Law firms are capitulating. Most education institutions are capitulating. Companies would rather bribe Trump with gold statues (Apple) for their own short-term kickback than speak up even a tiny bit to prevent a mid-term economic collapse.
I genuinely don't see the US avoiding a self-inflicted (global) depression anymore.
What I really fail to understand - how can departments like BLS screw up to this extent. Either they are grossly incompetent or they are intentionally corrupt. The data covers the period from March 2024 to March 2025 and trims the average monthly jobs gains seen during this period (roughly the last 10 months of Joe Biden's presidency and the first two months of Trump's) from a monthly average of 147,000 to about 71,0…
There's a little bit of a philosophical thing here -- do you adjust the earlier measurement by some function because it's usually been high and revised downwards? If you do, you need to let every user know that you're doing something different, etc. The worst case is that both the statistics orgs and the users are adjusting the numbers for a bias and overshooting. This means there's a certain inertia: it can be bette…
This is a very interesting point. So if BLS suddenly became more accurate, all the agencies have to re-tune their own biases and corrections => Could lead to short term discrepancies.
What one sees as inefficiency is actually efficient from a totally different lens.
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So uh, I'm the first person in my family to break the cycle of poverty. I have nobody I trust to follow advise with money. I do all the 'standard' boring investment strategies (401, index funds, roth, etc). I don't bother with crypto (scams). What does one do if stagflation is coming? Float more cash? Buy real estate?
Gold, make sure your debts are low, trim expenses now. Start thinking long term, what things will you need 5-10 years from now that will only be much more expensive or hard to get.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The good news is that these economic problems are entirely the result of bad policies and can be reversed. If we were to also raise broad based taxes, it would allow the Fed to cut interest rates, stoking long term investment, loosen up the housing market (which would allow more people to move), lower the Federal deficit, and improve the trade balance (as if that actually mattered).
It would require admitting policies were wrong And obeying the Constitution And a lot of other things that are never going to happen It will take a decade to dig out of this hole And then there will be 11 million people "disappeared" from labor market They are on a crime-spree, you don't do this much damage without malice Look at what they are doing to the WhiteHouse Oval Office, Rose Garden, ballroom, look at the BI…
if anyone else is curious, beyond all the political football stuff happening with the bureau of labor stats, Odd Lots did a good episode recently on the challenges with monthly jobs reports
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They survey businesses because the Social Security database has too much lag and does not contain enough detail. The lag is because it is based on employer submissions that are quarterly or annual.
Does that pass the basic common sense smell test? Everyone can see on their paycheck the amount, that is paid 30 days after any work day in the worst case. These payments are sent to a single federal bank account, and data-wise are combined with Social Security ID, sending bank id, date. It’s a bank, there’s a database. We are talking at most about 200mm records, a raspberry pi can process that query in minutes. If w…
Parsing tax or SS payments for what a "job" is would be a logistical nightmare, because that's not what the system is designed for (unlike the BLS's system, which is designed to count jobs).