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US oil supplies at a 36½ year low, SPR at a 39 year low; oil+products supplies at an 18½ year low
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March global oil surplus at 17.7 million barrels per day; 2nd qtr surplus to be at 6.2 million bpd despite OPEC-led cuts
- 85211 reads
Exchange system approved for Credit Default Swap mess
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From couples to copulas, David Li was an actuary!
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US oil supplies at a 36½ year low, SPR at a 39 year low; oil+products supplies at an 18½ year low
- 186676 reads
March global oil surplus at 17.7 million barrels per day; 2nd qtr surplus to be at 6.2 million bpd despite OPEC-led cuts
- 85211 reads
Exchange system approved for Credit Default Swap mess
- 33654 reads
From couples to copulas, David Li was an actuary!
- 43703 reads
The Golden Rule
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Will the NY Attorney General Bring Doomsday Charges Against Wall Street? If So, How Long Will He Survive?
- 1216370 reads
New York Post Claims Census Falsifies Unemployment Figures
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How Many Jobs Are Needed to Keep Up with Population Growth?
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VAT or Value Added Tax is Getting a Look in D.C.
- 345743 reads
U3 and U6 Unemployment during the Great Depression
- 321210 reads
The war on the middle class
- 315809 reads
House discusses 401k/IRA confiscation
- 314709 reads
Tax Cuts for the Rich Do Not Generate Jobs
- 279784 reads
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with this CPI release for September, we can now attempt to estimate the economic impact of the September retail sales figures which were released last week, which saw nominal sales rise 0.6%...for the most accurate estimate, and the way the BEA will be figuring 3rd quarter GDP at the end of October, we would have to take each type of retail sales and adjust it with the appropriate change in price to determine real sales; for instance, September's clothing store sales, which were unchanged in dollars, should be adjusted with the price index for apparel, which indicated prices for clothing were down by 0.7%, which tells us that real retail sales of clothing were actually up by 0.7% September..then, to get a GDP relevant quarterly change, we'd have to compare such adjusted real clothing sales for July, August and September with the similarly adjusted real clothing consumption for the 3 months of the second quarter (April, May and June ), and then repeat that process for each other type of retailer, obviously quite a tedious task to undertake manually. The short cut we usually take to get a quick and dirty estimate of the change in real sales for the month is to apply the composite price index of all commodities less food and energy commodities, which was down 0.1%, to retail sales less grocery, gas station, and restaurant sales, which accounts for nearly 70% of aggregate retail sales. in dollars, those sales were up by roughly 0.5% in September, while their composite price index was down 0.1%, meaning that real retail sales excluding food and energy sales were up by around 0.6%. then, for the rest of the retail aggregate, we find sales at food and beverage stores were up 0.1% in September, while prices for food at home were down 0.1%, suggesting a real increase of around 0.2% in the quantity of food & beverages purchased for the month. Next, sales at bars and restaurants were up 0.8% in dollars, but those dollars also bought 0.2% less, so real sales at bars and restaurants were up by about 0.6%. And while gas station sales were up 2.4%, gasoline prices were up 5.8%, suggesting a substantial real decrease in the amount of gasoline sold, with the caveat that gas stations sell more than gasoline, and we don't have a detailed breakout on that. Weighing the food and energy components at roughly 30% of total retail sales, and core sales at 70%, we can estimate that the aggregate of real retail sales in September were up about 0.5% from those of August…
next, to see how the change in real September sales impacts the change in 3rd quarter GDP, we have to compare those September sales to those of the 2nd quarter...now, to get an approximation of the real adjusted changes for September vis a vis the 3 months of the first quarter, we'd normally also have to adjust the September percentage changes for the upward revision to July and August sales that were included in the September retail report, which saw July sales revised from $457.7 billion to $458.5 billion and August's sales revised from $456.3 billion to almost $457.0 billion...however, since the net August revision is considerably less than 0.1%, it will not affect our September percentage increase, but the total $1.5 billion extra sales would still add 0.03 percentage points to GDP...next, using Table 7 in the pdf for the August personal income and outlays report, which gives us already inflation adjusted changes for the prior months, we find that real sales of goods were up 0.2% in May, up 0.4% in June, up 0.7% in July, and down 0.6% in August...that means real September sales, up 0.5% from August, were up about 0.6% from June, up about 1.0% from May, and up about 1.2% from April, or up more than 0.9% from the average of the 2nd quarter...aggregating real September goods sales as 100.5% of those in August shown in Table 7 of the income and outlays report with July and August sales and comparing that to real 2nd quarter goods sales shown in Table 8, we find that real good sales grew 0.78 from the 2nd quarter to the 3rd, or at a 3.17% annual rate, a pace that would add at approximately .67 (+/-10%) percentage points to 3rd quarter GDP from the goods portion of personal consumption expenditures alone.. ...
These programs are effective at driving up prices for arms and ammo for the common man. Very effective.
You're right and wrong. Darrell Castle isn't known by many conservatives. I am a #nevertrump and #neverclinton voter who intends to vote for Castle, but only because I actually know who he is and what he stands for. I didn't know who he is until recently. I think that many more conservatives will get on board if we can find the right messaging. And this messaging in this article (at least a small part of it) is not the right messaging. There is a branding problem. Nobody knows who you are. I intend to help spread the news. If you can reach out to millennials and connect, they'll carry your advertising water for you. I'm a millennial, and that's what I intend to do, but you need to connect with many more of us. DO NOT compromise any of your principles and values in that process. Instead, just communicate with my generation. Do some research. Figure us out. Then share your messages where we are. We need to hear what Castle has to say.
Not saying that Trump won't pull a bait and switch, and I'll bet his hotels are loaded with workers on guest Visas...but...
http://www.breitbart.com/2016-presidential-race/2016/09/20/hillary-clint...
the rich have always wanted to screw the poor -- it is up to us to vote them out and take our country back
You can find out where all this sorry stuff leads if you read 2094. See 2094thework.com
to the public is ridiculous. I guess they are trying to get money for the index, it should probably be paid by industry or large institutions.
i know the PMIs are widely followed, but since they are surveys of execs rather than data, they don't feed into GDP, all i've been doing is noting the index values...both of them took a tumble in August, we'll have to wait to see how that plays out in the regular August releases..
ISM manufacturing is down, showing contraction. I've stopped covering it because they made getting the data very difficult so no graphs.
Thanks for the kind words Dan and Robert. I may wish to take you up on that offer Robert. If you wish to move my post to an article of its own I am OK with that. I found out about two more prominent free trader economists that have grown increasingly skeptical about the benefits of globalism - Martin Wolf and Larry Summers (yes, that Larry Summers!)
Wow. Pretty scary. Through their wholy-owned government, the corporate order is preparing to "defend democracy" against those who want it.
Dr. Phillips is right, this is the start of a very good op-ed or article and just email me if you want an author account. Good to see you again!
You should turn this comment into a post of it's own.
I tire too of this dismissive attitude from free trade ideologues saying all experts agree. There are quite a few serious economists who do not agree.
They range the gamut from generally being in favor of trade but that our safety net is woefully inadequate to handle the displacement to full on its been a bad deal from the get go. Names like Blinder, Baker, Tonelson, Gomory, Fletcher, Stiglitz, Roubini, Black immediately come to mind as well as former free trade cheerleaders like Reich and even Krugman changing their tunes in recent times.
Even the Adam Smith and David Ricardo would not agree with trade as its practiced today and they are the economists whose theories are often perverted to justify free trade. I just can not imagine the father of comparative advantage agreeing that trading wealth, jobs and technology for debt and deficit is any kind of advantage or good deal.
Something I like to recap when I hear these free trade bozos spout their nonsense:
"Benefits" of free trade
Weakened national security - the pentagon has been sounding this alarm for some time
Lessened technological and innovative edge - manufacturing accounts for over 70% of R&D investment - most advances come not from earth shaking "disruptive" technologies, but from incremental improvement to products and processes - as well as repurposing existing technology.
Stagnant wages - former higher pay, better benefit mfg workers shift to lower pay, no benefit service jobs
Intellectual property theft
Poor quality/ unsafe products
Commoditization of labor
Increased debt/deficit - borrowing to buy foreign made products that we once made for ourselves
Supply chain interruption - dependence on materials and products from unstable and potentially hostile parts of the world
Increased energy demand - takes a lot of energy to ship things all over the world
Accelerated environmental degradation- shift of production to less regulatory environments and increased consumption of extracted finite resources
Human rights abuses
People here in flyover country are not the unskilled uneducated rubes the elites take us for. We do see for ourselves the devastation that "free" trade has wrought on our communities - boarded up main streets, closed factories and the resultant loss of tax revenue to keep up basic services. Towns all over the industrial Midwest have lost their productive capacities I can take you on a tour of my city and tell you where every plant went - Mexico, China, Pakistan, India if not outright run out of business by unfair foreign competition. The few that remain are ghosts of their former selves. And these were not "buggy whip" makers that declined due to changing technologies - these were all manufacturers of products in daily use today. Another infuriating claim by the free traders BTW - that obsolescence and automation took the jobs away.
Two world wars were won by the Arsenal of Democracy - our manufacturing capacity was able to easily convert from civilian purposes to war material in short notice - we'd be in big trouble today if it came to that again, Cripes, we cant even make boots and uniforms anymore.
Then I hear crap like that T-shirts are cheaper. We used to be able to afford T-shirts just fine when we made them for ourselves.
Here is how it works:
Walmart claims they save an average family $2600 a year with their imported junk
An average manufacturing worker earned $50k a year. Mfg worker's plant closes and he/she is forced to take a service job that pays 20% less or $10k. $10000 - 2600 = $7400 less money an average family has that is not spent on housing, education, goods, savings, paying down debt and so forth- all productive things for an economy - but hey we saved a couple bucks on a T-Shirt - yippee!
Billionaires and their businesses are dictating trade, on a global scale. Both parties, EVERYBODY wants something done about these horrific trade deals, offshore outsourcing, bringing in foreign guest workers, glorified legalized money laundering, tax havening, etc. agenda.
The clue is in the derivatives driven crash. The major big banks are hedged up to a small percentage of assets per REGW.Big losses are not hedged. Private players will make a killing. The duped public will be told again why the banks will have to be bailed out.A return to the world before Graham Leach could be a step towards sanity, but never done voluntarily.
With all due respect SR, did you read the article or just the title? You are correct, but I make that point in the article.
Aside from their deeply religious convictions, the Constitution Party's paleocon stances make them more similar to Trump's brand of conservatism, than the business, globalist-friendly, neocon-welcome conservatism of the NeverTrumpers. As such, there's no way they'd support Castle over Trump. It's not really a matter of what's "conservative" or not, other than what is one's definition of conservative. NeverTrumpers are either Old or New Rich types who are in favor of the economic status quo. They don't care for what the Constitution Party is selling.
What I'm more puzzled by is why the Constitution Party isn't endorsing Trump this time around, like the American Independent Party already has in California. The only thing they differ on with Trump is on social matters, but one would think that Pence shores him up.
They just don't care. They are corrupt.
The future is bleak with either of these two. The question is how long can the US and the current system last?
My brother is an engineer and he does not see the danger of H-1Bs to his job. He reads business weak. The fool.
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