Happy New Week!
I know the interest in Sh3lving Phas3 Thr33, "PROJ3CT OAKTR33" (new name) is intense and intensifying. I wanted to update: A minor part of Phas3, building a minor booksh3lf, has been compl3t3d with minimal damage. I mean, some damage. Obviously.> But minor damage.
But meanwhile, the main proj3ct has 3xpand3d in ambition, power, and maj3sty: instead of being two double rows of Ikea shelves (that is, two rows of two shelves connected by a GRANHULT connecter), the proj3ct will now be two rows of tripl3 shelv3s, thr33 shelv3s conn3cted by two conn3ctors each, the length of almost the whole wall.
It will be a Sh3lving Paradis3 hitherto undr3am3d!
Plus, I'm putting up special sp3cial 3xtra bonus sh3lf hanging out below the Main Sh3lving Ass3mbly. For vitamins and suppl3m3nts and things of this natur3.
The last pi3ces of this pi3c3 d3 r3sistanc3 will be delivered Thursday, allowing a w33k3nd build. I will try to get most of my work for Friday done on Thursday, allowing liv3 sh3lving updat3s throughout the day!
To be done pre-build:
- Find and mark the studs
- Find my stupid saw so I can cut these sh3lves to custom l3ngth. I have literally no idea where this could be, which is weird, because it's a saw and isn't easily misplaceable.
- Figure out which button makes the drill go forward. Alternately, figure out which button makes the drill go backwards and then order special backwards-threaded screws from Chy-na.
So that's my 3conomy, Jack!
But what about the national economy?
Best economy in history, Fat!
The NYT has a sad:
A sell-off in markets around the world turned into a rout on Monday as investors grew panicky about signs of a slowing American economy, with stocks tumbling across Asia and Europe.
The moves were a sharp reversal in the world's major markets, which for much of the past year have risen to new heights, propelled by optimism about cooling inflation, solid labor markets and the promise of artificial intelligence technology.
The declines were especially pronounced in Japan, where fears about the economy added to other concerns about the damage a strengthening yen could do to corporate profits.
The Nikkei 225 index fell 12.4 percent. It was the benchmark index's biggest one-day point decline, larger than the plunge during the Black Monday stock market crash in October 1987. The Topix index, which includes companies that represent a broad swath of Japan's economy, fell 12.2 percent.
The unease spread to Europe, where the Pan-European Stoxx index fell more than 2 percent in early trading, with every major market on the continent recording declines.
American markets are crashing, too.
And analysts are now speaking of the "Sahm rule," a rule that has successfully predicted every recession for the past 54 years.
Stocks plunged on Monday as U.S. recession fears caused turmoil throughout the global markets.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 1,000 points, while the Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 also fell by 5% and 3.7%, respectively.
A weak jobs report and shrinking manufacturing activity in the world's largest economy, coupled with dismal forecasts from the big technology firms, pushed the Nasdaq 100 and Nasdaq Composite into a correction last week.
...
The weak jobs data also triggered what is known as the "Sahm Rule," seen by many as a historically accurate recession indicator.
"The July jobs report is being viewed as a recession warning, and the markets are responding accordingly," said Bill Adams, chief economist at the Dallas-based Comerica Bank.
With the jobless rate unexpectedly rising, the so-called Sahm rule is now in play. Named after former Federal Reserve economist Claudia Sahm, the rule has successfully predicted every recession since 1970.
It stipulates that the economy is in the early stages of a recession when the three-month moving average of the jobless rate is at least a half-percentage point higher than the 12-month low. Over the past three months, the unemployment rate has averaged 4.13%, which is 0.63 percentage points higher than the 3.5% rate recorded in July 2023, crossing that threshold.
Big Wall Street brokerages also revised their Fed rate projections for 2024 to show greater policy easing by the central bank.
So the Fed will begin cutting interest rates to try to stave off the recession. But this, of course, will lead to further rising inflation. High interest rates dampen inflation but also dampen economic growth; low inflation rates spur growth, but also spur inflation.
"The Best Economy In History, Jack!" may now be in the same place as Carter's economy in the seventies, in which there were literally no good moves to make. In a "stagflation" economy, which features the worst of both worlds, low growth and high inflation, you can't cut interest rates to spur growth because that will increase the inflation which is already too high, and you can't raise rates to slow inflation because that will tank an already-weak economy.
A new Rasmussen survey finds that the real unemployment rate is around double what the Regime admits it to be.
And it might be four times more than what the Regime admits.
Rasmussen surveyed nearly 9,000 American adults and found that in July the percentage of Americans who are unemployed and looking for work -- this is the number that the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) should report each month -- was 8.4%. The BLS reported a rosy 4.3% unemployment rate last month, up from June's equally imaginary 4.1%.
...
Nearly one in 10 work for the government at one level or another. Those workers are supported entirely by tax dollars without producing any material wealth. Every government employee involved in regulation makes it harder for the rest of us to do so.
If you've been keeping track of these numbers in your head, you might notice they don't add up to anything close to 100%. About three percent of adults surveyed answered "not sure" about their employment situation, the kind of answer that I assume involves smoking weed. The remaining 9.7% said they were unemployed but not looking -- i.e., "Not in Workforce."
That means the percentage of Americans who could be working and perhaps would really like to be working but either can't find work or have given up finding work is 18.1%. That's more than four times the official unemployment rate.
I've got good news for everyone, though: Kamala's got this. She will direct all of her expertise and skill to solving this insolvable problem.
At the beginning of August last year, Kamala Harris praised a jobs report as being an example of "Bidenomics" at work. The term was co-opted by the Biden administration as a means of countering what Republicans were saying about the weak economy. Every good bit of news that came out, they took credit for.
"Bidenomics is working," she said at the time, letting the Biden-Harris administration take credit for the economy that month.