In the recent Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of Job Openings & Labor Turnover, it was reported that employers had 6.16 million jobs unfilled, a record for the index. A significant number of new job openings are in the logistics industry. Jennifer Smith writes at the Wall Street Journal that expansion in the e-commerce industry is driving a surge in hiring at package-delivery and transportation firms. U.S. employers overall added 209,000 jobs in July, driven largely by service-sector growth. Health-care employers added 39,400 jobs, while food services and drinking places gained … [Read more...]
China’s Most Serious Bubble
Yet another bubble has caught up to China's over-regulated economy, this time it's growing in the domestic asset-management industry. The problem for China's closed economy is that with no way for money to escape, any time the authorities manage to pop a bubble in one area of the economy, another grows somewhere else. Anjani Trivedi writes: Chinese regulators are targeting the latest bubble in their financial system: the domestic asset-management industry. Unfortunately, it is a moving target. The gargantuan industry—a byproduct of China’s trapped and churning capital—has more than doubled … [Read more...]
States Pull Back While They Await Federal Government Infrastructure Plan
States aren't borrowing as much money to fund roads, airports, bridges and other pieces of infrastructure because they're waiting to see what the Trump administration and Congress will propose in a coming infrastructure spending bill. There haven't been many details on the plan, other than that the president has promised to spend a lot of money on rebuilding American infrastructure. Reuters journalists Robin Respaut and Hilary Russ report: New deals have lagged since November's post-election selloff, when state and local governments quickly issued bonds fearing potential policy changes … [Read more...]
RAGE Gauge: Is This the Calm Before the Storm?
Is this the calm before the storm? Why bother getting into the prediction business when you can safely navigate these waters with a well crafted plan? It begins with you. Are you protecting your money as well as you can? Now is the time to look out into the ocean and think long and hard about what you're doing. Remember, when the storm warnings come you need to have the discipline and conviction to ride it out. Having spent many an hour sailing the local sea of Newport, Buzzards Bay, and Vineyard Sound, storms turn seconds into minutes and minutes into hours. You hope it will end … [Read more...]
Toyota’s New America First Policy
After lowering its American exposure in response to a scandal involving sticky accelerators, Toyota is coming back to the U.S. in response to the new administration. Between market fundamentals and prodding from the Trump administration, Toyota is taking a new look at its U.S. operations. The auto maker recently signed a deal with Mazda to increase U.S. production by building a $1.6 billion plant in the U.S. The plant had been planned for Mexico, but plans changed after the president tweeted negatively about the idea. Chester Dawson and Sean McLain report: The company’s decision to open a … [Read more...]
Surging Exports Drive Down Trade Deficit
The trade gap narrowed by 5.9% from May to June. Rapidly rising demand for American goods around the world, and lower demand for imports worked together to shrink the trade deficit last month. Josh Mitchell and Eric Morath write: The report offered encouraging news for the U.S. economy, which has grown sluggishly this year but is starting to reap more benefits from strengthening economies overseas and a weakened dollar. Steady growth in Asia, Europe and South America is pushing up demand for American goods like soybeans and petroleum. Exports of goods reached the highest level on record in … [Read more...]
What You Missed Friday Night at the Newport Jazz Festival
The Newport Jazz Festival got the party started Friday night with Trombone Shorty and Orleans Avenue. Shorty, aka Troy Andrews, is the grandson of Jessie Hill who is known for the classic song "Ooh Poo Pah Doo.” Shorty closed his Newport show with a get up and dance version of his funk and soul sound with “Do To Me” heard throughout the colonial streets of downtown Newport. It was awesome. Here it is along with his take on his grandfather’s classic. Do To Me Ooh Poo Pah Doo … [Read more...]
Where Did All of Australia’s Power Go?
During the brutal summers in Australia, temperatures regularly rise to well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. This February (southern hemisphere Summer), when temperatures were peaking in Adelaide and across the continent, there was a problem. Australia, a major energy exporter, didn't have enough natural gas to run the power plants to keep the air conditioning on. As a result, when things got particularly bad one night, 90,000 homes in Adelaide had their power cut to prevent wider blackouts. How, you may be asking, can this happen in a country that exports natural gas and coal to the Pacific … [Read more...]
Greenspan: Bond Bubble on the Brink of Bursting
Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan issued a warning to investors on CNBC this morning, that the bond market, and along with it the stock market, are in danger of collapse. Greenspan blamed the abnormally low interests rates being set by the Federal Reserve for the danger in markets today. Greenspan predicts the change in the market will be "rather rapid." … [Read more...]
Will We Survive Artificial Intelligence?
According to The Wall Street Journal's Greg Ip, humans will still have relevance even after the popularization of artificial intelligence. Ip highlights advancements in other technologies that at first glance would have been thought to lower the demand for human labor, but in fact raised it. He calls this the Jevons Paradox, after the British economist William Stanley Jevons, who studied such phenomena. Ip writes: Yet AI is too amorphous a label to actually convey anything useful about what, precisely, it’s supposed to displace. Instead, think of it as a technology that does one thing … [Read more...]
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