Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktVital Statistics:
Stocks are flattish this morning on no real news. Bonds and MBS are down small.
Small business optimism improved markedly in November, according to the NFIB Small Business Optimism Report. The index rose by 8 points to hit the highest level since June 2021, and breaking through the 50 year average for the first time in 34 months.
All components of the index improved as uncertainty over the election faded. The labor market remains tight, with 36% of small businesses reporting they had jobs they were unable to fill. Labor costs remain the biggest concern for small businesses.
Sales remain challenged, however optimism for the future improved. The net number of firms reporting higher sales was negative 13, however a net 18% think things are about to get better.
“After a year of readings at 94 or lower (98 is the 50-year average), the Index of Small Business Optimism rose to 101.7 in November, clearly a response to the presidential election. The election results signal a major shift in economic policy, particularly for tax and regulation policies, that favor economic growth. Economic and employment growth have been dominated by government spending, financed with massive deficits, crowding out private spending with higher prices and interest rates. Average small firm loan costs rose from 4 percent to over 9 percent over the past four years. Government (federal, state, and local) employment (direct and indirect) surged, competing with private firms for employees, mainly those businesses that did not benefit from government spending. Trump’s first term as president produced inflation rates that averaged well under the Fed’s 2 percent target and very strong economic growth. Owners hope for a repeat performance.”
The national delinquency rate improved to 3.45% in October, according to the latest ICE Mortgage Monitor. The 90 day rate continues to tick up, however. Foreclosure activity remains muted, rising 12% MOM, but still down about 12% on a YOY basis.
We saw a spike in rate / term refis in October, which is something that has been non-existent for the past few years. Rate / term refis actually exceeded cash-out refis. Much of the activity came from loans originated in 2023, when mortgage rates were closer to 8%.
Productivity increased 2.2% in the third quarter, according to BLS. Unit labor costs were revised downward from 1.9% to 0.8%. A downward revision to compensation accounted for the change.
People’s household finance outlook improved dramatically, according to the latest data from the New York Fed. The outlook has returned to February 2020 levels (i.e. pre-pandemic) levels.
Filed under: Economy |
All Things in Moderation 
The voter focus groups continue to be one of the better things about the New York Times. These are great quotes to illustrate how the Hunter Biden pardon plays with regular voters:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/12/10/opinion/trump-voters-second-term-focus-group.html
LikeLike
The thing with the pardon power is that the only limiting factor, according to the Constitution, Article 1, Sec 2, is regarding pardoning and impeachment. The authors of the constitution weren’t stupid and surely they would have limited it if they didn’t perceive a potential need to protect one’s family and friends.
LikeLike
McWing:
The authors of the constitution weren’t stupid and surely they would have limited it if they didn’t perceive a potential need to protect one’s family and friends.
I think the problem with reaching back to the framers is that they never envisioned a federal legal code of the size and breadth that we now have. The stuff that they envisioned might be pardonable offenses was nothing like what has become pardonable under the nearly limitless reach of federal law now.
LikeLike
It seems to me that it was left so broad precisely because they could not predict what abuses the Legislature and Judiciary might create that would need to be checked. And if the Pardon power was abused, they left a mechanism (the Amendment process) to implement a check on it.
LikeLike
Yeah, I wasn’t looking at the focus group for constitutional analysis but rather how it played politically.
LikeLike
I’m sorry J, i’m a shallow reader and didn’t notice it was still part of the quote. I should have known better, sorry.
LikeLike
Still trying to push a false framing:
Unfortunately there’s one little problem with this approach:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/12/trump-musk-ramaswamy-doge-taxes.html
LikeLike
Good lord they love taxes. Every chance they get, everything that arises, they want to raise taxes.
Not confiscating money from the public is not spending, and I refuse to take anyone seriously who frames eliminating deductions or raising taxes in that way.
LikeLike
The only time the left proposes eliminating the mortgage interest deduction is when a Republican is in office.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“If Musk and Ramaswamy are serious about cutting government spending, they should start with the tax code”
Been stewing on this part. Why, with all the insane spending the government does, with all the crazy, worthless things we KNOW we spend money on, with a DoD that has proven almost impossible to audit, with the constant “use it or lose it” spending which is almost all waste, with the overspending, with the overstaffing . . . why in the world should they start with the tax code, even if you bought their delusional framing?
And speaking of the framing:
“but in fact, we spend approximately $1.7 trillion each year through the tax code.”
Why would any normal voter buy this logic? Arguments that certain deductions are unfair or unnecessary I could at least see people going, “hmm, maybe that makes sense”. But the language that we *spend* $1.7 trillion a year by not confiscating that money is profoundly irrational.
Not to mention raising taxes by $1.7 trillion would likely have negative economic impacts far beyond any benefit derived from the additional revenue to the government, so why would any politician sign off on that as a form of “government efficiency”? How is funneling more money into an over-staffed, over-spending, wasteful government populated agencies that take tax payer money as an entitlement and spend it on their own quality of life, or their own initiatives that often have no real benefit to the general public, qualify as improving government efficiency?
LikeLike
Jonathon Last epitomizes the out-of-touch progressive leftist.
Is America Serious?? (w/ Jonathan V. Last) | The Focus Group
LikeLike
This is a bit of a relief for me to hear this.
I was worried he wan an ashamed feminist.
LikeLike
Everything for progressives is based on race. The only issue with preferences is where one falls on the victim (colonizer/colonized) scale.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/01/hawaii-monarchy-overthrow-independence/680759/
New Zealand is dealing with similar issues:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/15/world/asia/new-zealand-parliament-maori-haka.html
LikeLike
Just when you give up on the New York Times, it goes and does something really important and worthwhile:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/world/europe/afghanistan-allies-enemies-nuristan-taliban.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/12/world/asia/lessons-learned-from-taliban-commander.html
LikeLike
Feels like we’re being gaslit by the DoD and those with a financial interest in drone and anti-drone defense technology.
LikeLike
I’m thinking it has something to do with that. If they are hoping this perpetuates the argument that America should have no drone development capacity I’m not sure that’s going to play.
I am mystified by the reaction here. Fucking mystery drones the size of SUVs flying around and nobody knows who’s doing it but we’re not going to try and stop them or shoot any down because why?
LikeLike
They know better than to try and fly those things around in states with less gun control.
LikeLike
Obviously.
I am not a gun owner, and I’m not sure at age 56 this would be the time to start. But if I were and one of those drones came near my house I’d have zero compunction about shooting it.
LikeLike
Heartbreaking.
LikeLike
To me, this continues to indicate they are rent-seeking LARPers, poseurs who are unserious and are continuing their lifelong effort to benefit from the power and prestige of their positions while accomplishing nothing, or actually making things worse.
But they are not serious about governing. They do not and have no intention of doing their job.
I’m premature, so much can happen, but I’m wondering what the next presidential election will look like. Mid-terms, too, but you get a real look at the temperature of the country during a presidential election. If this approach continues to dominate the Democratic party, and the press, I feel like there will be even more of a red shift among the electorate.
LikeLike
Interesting piece on whether woke politics started with OWS.
https://www.racket.news/p/fine-woke-cannibals
LikeLike
I think it started with the PC freaks on college campuses in the ‘80’s.
LikeLike
That was the beginning of the left’s takeover of language.
LikeLike
The effort began early, in the 60s at least, I think. Just made no penetration outside of academia. But it was back there brewing as the long march through the institutions continued apace.
LikeLike
It started with obama
LikeLike
The modern Antifa/black bloc I’d date to the Seattle WTO protests in 1999.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Juiceboxer notices the obvious and says Now It Can Be Told.
It takes a hear to stone not to laugh.
LikeLike
Denied Hegseth’s scalp for now, the Establishment fixes its sights on the first MILF cabinet pick.
How will we ever survive without the intelligence community’s endorsement? They’ve covered themselves in glory lo these many years.
LikeLike
Seriously. Whatever you feel about Trump, thinking any of these “experts” have a better opinion is intentional self-delusion.
LikeLike
It’s harder to co-opt someone who has been personally targeted by the security establishment.
LikeLike
Which I think seems transparently to obvious to people who pay attention to this stuff in passing, or should be, although I still hear political junkies (on the right) lamenting that Tulsi is a bad choice because she might be a Russian asset.
Which I understand from the Bulwark, which is basically a collective of unreconstructed communists who hate the general public but really love war, but from Commentary? National Review?
Not sure where Jonah Goldberg falls on Tulsi but I can guess. Although I am pretty much convinced Goldberg is very much his own political, ideological animal, and while I don’t agree with him about a lot I see him as sincere and thoughtful about his positions, and actually kind of respect him because he gets so much hate from the left and the right for having non-conformist opinions. When in truth he should be considered (by either side) in the classic definition of loyal opposition.
Unlike Bill Kristol who I now consider functionally a war criminal.
LikeLike
Re, Goldberg – I don’t know how you go from Liberal Fascism to what he is now – honestly. I look at Cenk Uyger and think he see’s an opportunity, a new market because he burned his old one by opposing Biden. National Review decided to oppose Trump because they find populism repulsive for some reason. What preceded their anti-populism however was a belief in their own intellectual superiority to the Republican Party writ large. NR still opposed Trump for the same reason but now are somewhat better at suppressing their disdain. Goldberg aligned himself with Bill Kristol and has convinced himself he’s intellectually consistent, but I don’t see it.
LikeLike
I think they see populism as mobocracy, as something that caters to emotions of the mob even if that ends up with negative results for the country, and the mob.
And people who flat-out reject populism are also enamored with the expert class and still, in their heart of hearts, believe the people need to be ruled by wise elites, rather than rule their own lives. It’s just hard wired. Feudalism didn’t just come from nowhere. Tribal instincts run deep.
Kristol was apparently a mentor for Jonah or something, so when it comes to people saying unhinged things that even Jonah would strongly disagree with, Kristol doesn’t get a mention. I haven’t listened to all of his output in recent years but it seems Goldberg rarely talks about Kristol in any context. And if he comes up, it’s not to oppose anything he said.
I think there is some sincerity to Cenk Uyger. In that like the 3rd way Democrats who gave us Clinton, he’s smart enough to see the Democrats are working their way towards a bad electoral future if they continue to shape their party around the eccentricities and interests of California elites. And he has left-wing populist goals he actually wants to see come to fruition, and will happily work with a right-winger if that will get us closer to that goal.
And when listening to Goldberg, I think he just has a huge blindspot when it comes to Trump. His brain is not letting him honestly process what’s coming in, what Trump’s positions actually are, what he’s doing. He also seems broadly opposed to any kind of transformational politics, considering large and sudden changes inevitably bad. Anything that isn’t a slow slide into the swamp with the occasional micro-win will inevitably end in the French revolution. Which I don’t think is true.
There really weren’t equivalents to Trump and Elon Musk and the rest of them in the French revolution. And for someone who opposes all the norm-bending Trump does, I would think it would be worth acknowledging how good Trump was at observing the actual law and dotting his I’s and crossing his T’s when doing almost anything in the Oval Office. Biden and most previous presidents are practically lawbreakers.
And for all the January 6th stuff the Democrats complain about, you notice nobody ever talked about what Trump and his staffers did to vandalize the White House (like Clinton admin did) or sabotage the incoming administration (as Biden admin is now). Because they didn’t.
Which you would think would be relevant when trying to paint a full moral picture, but of course that’s never what the media–or anybody on the left–is trying to do.
LikeLike
Jonah Goldberg gets paid by CNN. As long as he has that gig, his role will be to play the disappointed Republican.
LikeLike
Trump wants immigrants gone! Yet he keeps hiring them for his business? CAN YOU SAY HYPOCRITE?!?!?
YOU MAGA PEOPLE HATE FOREIGNERS!!! HATE TRUMP CUZ HE HIRES FOREIGNERS!!!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/trump-wants-immigrants-gone-he-s-keeps-hiring-them-for-his-businesses/ar-AA1vXkEc?ocid=msedgntp&pc=U531&cvid=b9e5e088677344279f9245b530d3d9ff&ei=61
I am mystified why the mainstream press thinks writing entire articles where they are so obviously and intentionally obtuse is good for them in some way.
Trump talks about illegal immigrants. His surrogates emphasize not only illegal immigrants but criminal illegal immigrants, the people who traffic drugs and do the sex trafficking, have a record of murder, assault or rape, are members of criminal gangs, and occasionally the large number of Muslim immigrants coming in through the southern border because they totally have a good reason to be doing that and are not terrorists, for sure, and of course all the Chinese illegal immigrants who come in through the southern border because that’s definitely a good idea to just let them in . . .
Nothing about any of that. I haven’t heard the Trump administration give any serious discussion to cracking down on legal immigrations or legit (and enforced) guest-worker visas, etc. Multiple stories like this that try to conflate opposition to illegal immigration and guest-worker visas is just retarded. And they are the vaunted 4th estate. Bah.
LikeLike
I’m watching Trump’s press conference and the media has decided that he is now the President and are treating him as such. It’s hilarious.
LikeLike
Trump is fucking brilliant. At an age that Biden was shaking hands with ghosts and being directed through bland public appearances by a handler dressed as the easter bunny.
I would never have seen myself saying this in 2016, and he is more than capable of making terrible decisions (although I’m honestly beginning to see his holding back with clear statements on January 6th as at least a potential form of intuitive, if cynical and amoral, political genius). But he’s a genius. Maybe not a very stable one but he is an intuitive genius. With his own set of eccentricities and flaws that most geniuses come burdened with.
I know the 4d chess thing is trite, and a cliche, and seems patently absurd to anyone left of center and many on the right, but now when he does something I think is stupid (which includes the Gaetz nomination, and so many of the things he says), I have to just think: I need to just hang on and see how this plays out. I don’t know what kind of long game he’s playing here.
Not saying he strategizes any of it consciously, but I think his intuitive genius is almost off the charts.
He just needs to let it loose. His approach to the expert class and the CDC and so on during COVID was terrible, but his approach was also very “hands off”.
LikeLike
He understands human nature.
LikeLike
Jeebus – I guess to McConnell, War, War, War is better than Jaw, Jaw, Jaw.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/price-american-retreat-trump-mitch-mcconnell
LikeLike
Mitch is really muddying the water there.
Trump is not going to turn the US isolationist. It is not isolationist to not want to give Ukraine aid in order to perpetuate a war without any kind of end goal or offramp. It’s not isolationist to want to use American power to urge both sides towards negotiation.
The $900 billion we spend on defense should be more than adequate, if we quit spending so much of that $900 billion of stuff that isn’t hard power. And being a military super power isn’t just about acquiring weapons; it’s about personnel. Just end the DEI and start appealing to fighting-age males with themes of patriotism and courage and I think our preparedness for conflict would go up drastically.
But Trump clearly tends to have a “speak loudly and carry a big stick” philosophy, one where you only use the stick if you absolutely have to, and you do it to either win immediately, accomplish an immediate and clearly defined goal, or to hurt one side or the other enough to push them towards negotiation.
And a lot can be done with diplomacy and soft power, if the approach isn’t weak and naive. If Biden hadn’t lifted sanctions on Iran I expect we would not have had an October 7th and the whole war in the middle east would not be happening, and certainly not the way it is. Arguably Putin didn’t invade Ukraine when Trump was president primarily because Trump is unpredictable, speaks loudly, and inventive. It clearly seemed much safer to invade when Biden was president, because nobody thought Biden would do anything, and except for trying to ramp up the war in Ukraine and make it uglier and messier, the Biden admin really hasn’t done much.
So I’m sympathetic with the first part: we shouldn’t be isolationist. On the other hand, any military action needs to have a clear interest for the United State from initiation to resolution. We should not just be supporting Ukraine to have Ukraine continue to fight endlessly. I agree we should have significant military capacity; on the other hand, I want to see an end to “use it or lose it” spending, no-compete contracts, DoD leaders walking out to become lobbyists the next day, or sitting on boards of major defense contractors.
Nothing Trump has said suggests to me that a DoD under Trump won’t be 1000% better than the DoD under Biden. And it’s perfectly reasonable to prefer threat to actual fighting, quick victory to endless war, and leading through strength rather than virtue signaling through “subsistence combat” like we’re doing in Ukraine. McConnell is living in the past.
Trump has said he wants to build up the military, not stagnate it. I’m not even sure what imaginary future president Mitch is shadowboxing with, but it’s not Trump.
“Progress on this front begins with real increases in defense spending.”
Yeah, not until the DoD stops spending money on nonsense, and can be universally audited.
“NO TIME TO TURN INWARD”
Again, he’s making an argument against a position the Trump administration has not endorsed. Everything is about getting the US a better deal, and controlling waste, and focus. The DoD spends lots of money that’s not about arms or war-making capacity or true defense related research.
LikeLike
It always equates to more spending without oversight.
LikeLike
For Scott:
https://www.racket.news/p/ketanji-brown-jackson-goes-broadway
LikeLike
I saw that earlier today. Amazing. Sounds like the perfect show for KJB to be involved in.
LikeLike
In 200 years, people will look back at the past 40 years as a cultural wasteland.
The art world is 100% social justice cringe.
LikeLike
There are still things that aren’t awful, but over the past decade and especially the past several years it’s corrupted everything, everywhere, all at once.
Comic books are social justice cringed, video games are social justice cringe, movies and TV are social cringe, and lot of fiction and non-fiction has become social justice cringe (and new author publishing has become heavily biased towards women, for social justice reasons). I assume all fine art is social justice cringe these days.
But there’s good stuff squeezing through. Almost all from independent sources. Occasionally via skunkworks at a big studio or publisher.
That said, I’m sure there will be a more detached and abstract interest in the Social Justice tulip mania that overtook us; most of it will probably be fairly fascinating to those with a lot of historical distance from it.
LikeLike