News

This being the weekend of shopping craziness, we look at how the looming battle between online retailers and conventional shopping mall operators could burst into anti-trust actions in 2017. Not only that, but as it happens, one of the major implosions of the Greater Depression will be the loss of assets formerly held as shares … Read More

The NYSE will close at 1 PM today (Eastern) to give brokers time off to spend all the money they made this year. Both the Dow and S&P are expected to open on the up side after topping the 19-thousand and 22-hundred levels, respectively, earlier in the week. What’s not clear is when the “normal” … Read More

The mentions have been slowly building. At first a story here, a mention there. Then, almost suddenly, it is BFM – Black Friday Morning. There are a couple of schools of thought, but the main thrust of things is the expectation that after all the (fake) drama of the election, people will get up off … Read More

Schedule Note:  Before we get into actual content, a word about schedules around here. This morning’s report will be (blissfully) short and on point. No Peoplenomics report tomorrow and the normal Saturday report will not be posted until about noon Sunday. After almost 68-years, I’m trying to kick-it this week. I’ll be back to my … Read More

Near as we can figure it, the kids (both grown up and on the way) will be leaving the Denver area around oh-dark-thirty tomorrow, then driving east on the freeway to Salina, Kansas where they will turn right and head on-down to Texas. Our guest quarters make-over was nearly done last night – the new … Read More

We need to have us a discussion about barriers to entry. The B-school concept is simple enough: One of the reasons that there are not 500 automakers in the USA is because of barriers to entry. Said barriers are the start-up obstacles that any new competitor must overcome in a world of crony-capitalism. Old-guard players … Read More

I don’t know if it’s the NRA who has slammed legislation through 48-states, but a buddy of mine up the street has been charged with a misdemeanor. The heinous crime of this chum? Well, he lives on County Road 404 and a neighbor of his likes to hunt. But the catch is, my neighbor has … Read More

A couple of points on  whether we should do away with Interest tops this morning’s discussion in our Focus section. No, not as in Sharia law.  As in simply eliminate all the financial shenanigans that seem to accompany the game of charging “interest.”  Might change business cycles, too… After that, I suppose the chart comparing … Read More

I thought we’d begin this morning with an update because reader Bruno was shocked when I wrote down how much the M1 (seasonally adjusted) money supply had been slammed by the Fed recently. Since the H.6 Money Stocks report is updated every Thursday (except Holidays, of course) we wanted to give you the latest figures. … Read More

If you are going to survive an ELE (extinction level event) it might be a fair thing to print off in your “Secret Sauce that I Might Need Some Day Journal.” (SSTIMNSDJ for short). What got me onto this totally overlooked part of prepping? Two things: A) Friends of ours are buying a mountain home … Read More

The Mystery of the Consumer Prices Rise Somewhere there is a statistical prick (or prickette/prickee) who needs to be called out. Here we are, less than 10 days after the election and what do we get? A press release like this one saying: “The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) increased 0.4 percent … Read More

A discussion about how NOT to prepare for Thanksgiving is in order around here, although I’m sharing it with YOU and not necessarily “she who must be obeyed” until after our guests are down the road a week from Sunday. The first thing you don’t want to do is do a one month leisurely project … Read More

There are two terrible problems for the new administration to deal with (other than faithless Electors and Oregon insanity which we will get to in a moment):  One is the trade problem and the other is the rate problem. What we will focus on is propagation speed of economic change.  It isn’t like driving a … Read More