Latest business and finance news & analysis
Just busy as hell around our joint in the woods of East Texas. The “Junior Logging Badge” – raccoons jailbreaking the lean-to greenhouse, kicking out Outlook and moving to Thunderbird. Plus hours and hours in my search to finally prove or disprove to myself whether “scalar” is real or (like Bitcoin) all hype and nothing but … Read More
The new chainsaw arrived Wednesday. Counting the two “Chineseums” that failed this week (bought on sale two years ago), this makes my fifth electric. Best of the bunch remains the Oregon 16″—but it’s corded, and that’s a problem. One workaround is loading up the generator (plus fuel and cords), then tractoring everything down to the … Read More
This is where we look ahead and size up what we can about next week. Because while the past is full of interesting ideas, those have already “locked” into history. What seems like it would be more useful would be an in-depth summary of things that will likely impact us (large and small) before they … Read More
Don’t want to be tossed in your TL;DR pile, so we will keep today (and maybe future) columns shorter. World’s going to hell-in-a-handbasket, so who needs fluff, right? Ex-Im Follies We have an Export-Import prices report to deal with. But, as I’ve been screaming for several decades now, such reports are akin to ‘driving via … Read More
Retail has to be the lead – because? As we spend, so we end… Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for April 2025, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $724.1 billion, up 0.1 percent (±0.5 percent)* from the previous month, and up 5.2 … Read More
World has to run a “gauntlet” between now and 2050 as we explained last week. Now, we need to inspect how that choice is laying out in more detail. With the hope that by doing so, we will see where the “muddle-through” might be found. Turns out the pivot-point may be the shelf life and … Read More
Before we launch into the CPI just out, let’s chill for a second to review Big Picture stuff. It matters. My consigliere made the fine point Monday that “The market won’t care that trade has been kicked down the road for only 90-days…the market wants to go up…” He’s got a point: After screaming up well … Read More
Puke Monday. Inner ears will “tumble” from weightlessness. Fresh spikes in the punch bowl. Dow futures were +900 points earlier. Second Coming at hand? Um….no…. What we think is going on? Someone (besides us) figured out the abyss was open and the world was about to fall in. So let’s all get the Plunge Protection … Read More
It goes by the moniker GHD (short for Grid, hard-down) in contingency planning circles. But even if the “peace-fire” in South Asia lasts more than a few minutes, going through real hard personal reviews of vulnerabilities this week revealed we don’t have enough 3-by-5 (or 4-by-6) cards to run even a tiny small business. No yellow … Read More
You may not have time for 50+ pages of last-minute checklist and thinking notes… So it will be available in the Peoplenomics Bookshelf part of the Master Index. And sorry, don’t mean to sound cavalier or too cynical, but we’re in that kind of world now. Notice? Also for your breakfatudinal (zat a word?) munch … Read More
Gee – target rich environment – but better too much to write about than too little. Leo – as in Lion? There is a new Pope. Perhaps he will be more moderate, but Churches and Religions, are – based on history – in the prosper or perish mode. Not unlike tech, but with an intangible deliverable. … Read More
That our A.I. issues are somehow an off-shoot of he India-Pakistan war-like tension build? “India has integrated AI into its military operations, utilizing AI-driven social media analysis, satellite surveillance, and cyber tools to identify and monitor potential threats. These technologies have improved the precision and efficiency of India’s counterterrorism efforts. However, the immediate trigger for … Read More
Fortunately I got most of my important work done very early today but one of our AI’s is down – paid version of grok (SuperGrok). A watcher system informs us… It appears that Grok AI, developed by xAI, is currently experiencing significant service disruptions, including unexpected message limit errors and account issues—even for paying SuperGrok … Read More