Morning Report: Manufacturing activity improves

Vital Statistics:

Stocks are flattish this morning on no real news. Bonds and MBS are flat.

Manufacturing activity contracted for the 8th consecutive month, according to the ISM Report. That said, conditions improved compared to last month. The internals of the report are mainly good news: new orders and production increased, while the prices index fell markedly to near-neutral levels.

 “U.S. manufacturing activity contracted again in November, but at a slower rate compared to last month. Demand continues to be weak but may be moderating, output declined again, and inputs stayed accommodative. Positive signs for demand include the (1) New Orders Index returning to expansion territory, (2) New Export Orders Index increasing moderately (up 3.2 percentage points but still in contraction territory), (3) Backlog of Orders Index dipping further into strong contraction territory, and (4) Customers’ Inventories Index indicating levels were only marginally above ‘too low.’ Output continued in contraction: Employment shrunk, but at a much slower rate, and production took a small step in the right direction. Demand remains weak, as companies prepare plans for 2025 with the benefit of the election cycle ending. Production execution eased in November, consistent with demand sluggishness and weak backlogs. Suppliers continue to have capacity, with lead times improving but some product shortages reappearing.”

The issue of potential tariffs barely came up; and its impact will probably be positive in the short term, as companies accelerate spending plans to beat the increases. So, all the sturm and drang in the media over the issue seems to be partisan posturing.

Fed Governor Waller supports a rate cut at the upcoming December FOMC meeting. “At present, I lean towards supporting a cut in the policy rate at our December meeting … Overall, I feel like an MMA fighter who keeps getting inflation in a chokehold, waiting for it to tap out, yet it keeps slipping out of my grasp at the last minute.” Waller emphasized that monetary policy is still restrictive, and cutting rates in December means that the Fed will still have its foot on the brakes, just not as hard.

The odds of a December rate cut have increased from 60% to 72%.

43 Responses

  1. ”Fooling” doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

    The Cuban government has been fooling U.S. sanctions by concealing the true nature of the company that handles money sent by Cuban-Americans to their families on the island, a Miami Herald investigation shows.

    https://archive.is/sv19L

    There’s a great Trump tweet from several years ago that really hits home,

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  2. Sure, why not? It’s not like anybody could it here, in the US.

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  3. Targeted hit. This is going to have some reverberations, regardless of the reason for the hit.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/04/us/brian-thompson-united-healthcare-death/index.html

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  4. I don’t (or I haven’t in the past) listed to a lot of Joe Rogan at all, but this just happened to get served up to me by YouTube and holy shit.

    Could not stop listening to this guy.

    All about the censorship state, about how the CIA and the pentagon fund all these NGOs to train journalists how to censor stories and just on and on and on . . .

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  5. Trump said the same thing about Gaetz hours before pulling the plug.

    Hope he actually fights for Hegseth, or at least appoints a new SecDef that was previously enlisted. Plenty of USMC Gunnies that would do an outstanding job.

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    • Would this not just play into Trump’s hands? Give him permission to pardon everybody while run a full transparent investigation into all those pardoned people? It actually takes away the attacks and potential political price of exposing all the corruption, and if it’s really probably bad it will make the Democrats look awful.

      I don’t think Biden gives two fucks but there is a way a bunch of blanket pardons does more to help Trump drain the swamp than anything else anybody could possibly do, IMO.

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    • And I put this it the category if the kind of thing that just loses them 1% of voters in the next few election cycles. Death by a thousand cuts. Want to help make blacks and Hispanics and working class voters feel like you are actually a party of self serving elites and all your promises are lies? Do this. Cult members will make all the excuses in the world, but some of those red voters who only voted right because of Trump will get cemented into the Republican column for a long time where in another timeline they might have flipped again by the next cycle. Because they can’t help themselves.

      Though if anyone seriously listens to that Mike Benz interview and still votes for Democrats or uniparty Republicans, they just want to live in a dystopian dictatorship.

      I don’t know but I feel like Joe Rogan is going to do to the Democrats and the deep state Bulwark “Republicans” what Walter Cronkite did to LBJ by coming out against the Vietnam war. Joe is the media now.

      And these lefties who say: the Democrats need to make their own Joe Rogan, like they can grow one in a lab. My god they are so stupid.

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    • Taibbi sums it up:

      Pardon Me, But This Is Bullshit

      Joe Biden or whoever is running the White House can absolve anyone they please, but Anthony Fauci needs to stand tall before the man. The world is owed answers

      Matt Taibbi

      Dec 05, 2024

      ∙ Paid

      https://www.racket.news/p/pardon-me-but-this-is-bullshit

      Liked by 1 person

  6. I think this is kind of worth watching, maybe. Was for me. It’s the Bulwark lefties, many of whom pretend they were once conservatives, watching election night, trying to keep hope, then losing hope, then preparing for the dark grim future of president Trump. Of all of them, unsurprisingly, the only one I really like is JVL–because one guy calls him the smartest person at the Bulwark and he’s right. He knew Trump was winning early.

    And even JVL is surprised by the resounding victory.

    Of course they talk about organizing the opposition. That part is so tedious. That element of these people is so self-serving, so self-congratulatory. But it was interesting to me. No real meltdowns, though.

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    • I think they were largely neocons, not conservatives. Leftists who were put off by the pacifist nature of the democrats after 9/11.

      Now that the left is all about fighting wars, they are back where they belong.

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    • KW:

      the only one I really like is JVL–because one guy calls him the smartest person at the Bulwark and he’s right.

      He may be the smartest at the Bulwark, but the fact that he admits to believing the Selzer poll in Iowa (Harris +6%!) doesn’t speak well of his thinking.

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      • I agree. But I get a sense that everyone there bought it. Again, he also said he never envisioned any scenario in which Trump would win the popular vote, whereas I–not a trained professional political analyst–thought it never possible that Trump could win the popular. Not that he would (too much depends on ground game and knowing what’s going on there is about impossible for the layperson at home) but I could certainly envision it, if they were getting enough potential Trump voters to the polls.

        But yes, that is odd. The Selzer poll was inconsistent with previous polling on Iowa, everybody else’s polling in Iowa, and made about has much sense as a Trump+6 in New York. If I saw one poll that had Trump +6 in New York, I would think there was something very wrong with that poll. Not sure why folks on the left have problems doing that.

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  7. The end result of confirming someone to the Supreme Court who couldn’t answer the question: “What is a woman”

    Two hours in, Tennessee Solicitor General J. Matthew Rice remarked that giving testosterone to a biological male with a hormone deficiency is different from giving it to a biological female with gender dysphoria. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked what basis he had for saying that. Didn’t they do the same thing in the body?

    No, said the solicitor general, who sounded faintly surprised. “If you give a boy testosterone … that allows him to go through and develop the reproductive organs associated with being a male,” Rice said. “If you give it to a girl, it renders the girl infertile.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/06/transgender-rights-skrmetti-supreme-court-tennessee/

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    • I still say she’s the second worst justice on the court. Sotamayor remains numero uno in being utterly unqualified for the bench.

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      • KW:

        Sotamayor remains numero uno in being utterly unqualified for the bench.

        I couldn’t agree more. The Wise Latina is a second rate legal mind and a horrible judge. At one point during oral arguments in the Tennessee case it became apparent that she actually believes a person can “choose which sex to adopt”. Her scientific illiteracy is even worse than her legal reasoning.

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        • Was that her or Jackson?

          Andrew Sullivan made the observation that these people act like they believe that children are born as Mr. Potato Heads and sex traits get added later and are interchangeable.

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        • jnc:

          Was that her or Jackson?

          That was definitely Sotomayor. In my latest substack I go through a lot of what Jackson said too, which was fallacious for its own reasons. But Sotomayor is worse.

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  8. If the Trump campaign has any left over funds, they should spend it on an ad buy for this:

    Apologies to Afroman

    I didn’t know, I swear!

    Matt Taibbi

    Dec 06, 2024

    https://www.racket.news/p/apologies-to-afroman

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  9. My man Rich Barris is totally black-pilled this morning.

    Starts upbeat enough but gets into talking about the Republican senate like Obi Wan talking about Mos Eisley.

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  10. Lol

    I think some Republicans Senators will be influenced by this bullshit. I’d like to know which ones so as to support their primary opponents.

    We deserve a MILF DNI!

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    • All the mice are voting to hell the cat. It’s the LAST thing anybody should listen to. “100 national security advisers are worried Gabbard might threaten their cushy, unaccountable jobs.”

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    • All the mice are voting to hell the cat. It’s the LAST thing anybody should listen to. “100 national security advisers are worried Gabbard might threaten their cushy, unaccountable jobs.”

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  11. Hillsdale college has some great speakers. Great talk on the media (done before election).

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  12. Popehat out there covering himself in glory.

    Can we now admit that he’s been a choad for some time?

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