Private-sector employment jumped by 241,000 jobs in March, beating February’s numbers and forecasters once again. This is the fifth straight month that the U.S. economy has added 200,000 jobs or more, and is far ahead of the paltry jobs growth recorded last September — just 80,000 new jobs that month. Forecasters were expecting just 200,000 new jobs as they anticipated that demand by employers would exceed available supply.
According to ADP/Moody’s Analytics,
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, March 19, 2018:
The increasing flood of Venezuelan refugees is putting so much pressure on neighboring countries that the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is calling for help. More than four million people have left Marxist Nicolas Maduro’s socialist “paradise” in just the last four years, and the numbers are increasing. They are finding temporary refuge in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Aruba, and Spain; however, those countries are being pushed to their limits.
The NRC stated that the “international community … must step up efforts immediately to provide much-needed protection and humanitarian assistance … a comprehensive and rapid response to food, education, documentation and health needs [is] vital throughout the region … [we are] requesting an immediate $2.5 million … particularly on the border areas between Colombia and Venezuela.”
But, as the NRC itself admits,
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, February 7, 2018:
With Wall Street regaining its footing following the decline that started last Thursday, commentators in the mainstream media are still searching for the decline’s cause. Initially they claimed that it was an unexpected surge in inflation evidenced by the rise in the yield of 10-year U.S. Treasury notes approaching three percent (in early September it was closer to two percent). This was followed by the jobs report that announced that wages increased 2.9 percent year-over-year, up from just over two percent previously.
Writers at the Wall Street Journal dug deeper: The selloff was caused by — ready? — “volatility sellers, risk-party funds and algorithmic trading.” They then went into mind-numbing detail about how these strategies work and how the crash cost people using in them in excess of $200 billion.
Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, told TheStreet.com that maybe it was the Federal Reserve’s unhappiness with The Donald:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, January 31, 2018:
As a measure of the strength of the economy, the Conference Board, which has been conducting similar surveys since it was founded in 1916, established its “baseline” for its consumer confidence index at 100 in 1985. Put another way,
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Tuesday, January 30, 2018:
The chief executive of ExxonMobil, the largest of the seven publicly traded “supermajor” oil companies known as “Big Oil,” Darren Woods, posted a blog on Monday announcing that his company would be redirecting $35 billion that would otherwise be headed for Washington, D.C., into much more potentially profitable projects. He gave credit to the new tax reform law just signed into law by President Trump:
These investments are underpinned by the unique strengths of our company and enhanced by the historic tax reform recently signed into law….
These positive developments will mean more jobs and economic expansion across the United States in a myriad of industries.
This $35 billion is on top of the $23 billion to $27 billion the company said last year that it would be investing globally over each of the next three years. And there’s more to come, said Wood: “We’re actively evaluating the impact of the lower tax rate on the economics of several other projects currently in the planning stages.”
Translation: Monday’s announcement is just the beginning for ExxonMobil. The company has 20 billion barrels of proven reserves of crude oil “equivalent” (oil and natural gas) and a refinery capacity of nearly five million barrels a day. Its 20 refineries are spread across 14 countries, and it operates 100 major exploration projects around the world. It recently purchased $6 billion worth of oil leases from the Bass family on top of the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico, and is expected to expand further its operations in North Dakota above the Bakken Formation.
Wood praised tax reform for providing his company the opportunity to redirect its resources to more profitable opportunities:
These are quality investments for our shareholders that are made even better by tax reform. These are all possible because of the resource base developed by our industry along with sound tax and regulatory policies that create a pro-growth business climate here in the U.S.
Wood estimated that the new investments, once completed, will add an estimated 12,000 new workers to his company which already employs 73,500 people. The implications for the economy are obvious, and enormous: Exxon rarely misses an opportunity to move capital into profitable projects, adding to its already enormous $330 billion asset base. It will still pay taxes on those additional profits, just at a much lower level. Those nearly 90,000 people on the payroll will also be paying taxes, also at lower levels than before.
But what is often missed is that ExxonMobil is just one, although one of the largest, of the companies announcing such investments directly as a result of tax reform and its lower tax rates. Walmart, Apple, Boeing, Comcast, and hundreds of others have announced similar plans to reward their employees through bonuses and/or salary increases or through additional expanded employment opportunities. What also is often missed is the “ripple-effect” of monies being redirected from Washington to places where it is much more profitably employed. Every company does business with dozens if not hundreds of other companies that consider those investments as increased business revenue. That new flow encourages further investment at a micro level. It’s the unseen hand of Adam Smith that improves the standard of living for everyone, even as each individual and company seeks its own best opportunities.
All of this is highly annoying to far-left liberal Democrats, who seem to have a death wish, especially during this mid-term election year. California’s House Democrat Nancy Pelosi seems most skilled at self-immolation by calling those salary increases and bonuses “crumbs,” while former DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) dismissed them as “chump change.” To this writer’s knowledge, not a single employee offered either a bonus or a salary increase has turned it down. And $35 billion from ExxonMobil alone is hardly “chump change.”
Not only are these new funds being redirected away from Washington, known for its extravagant wastefulness in spending other peoples’ money, it is very likely to be employed in highly profitable projects that have now become viable thanks to tax reform.
Why, even the International Money Fund (IMF) has been forced to admit that these new investments are of such a magnitude that the ripple effect worldwide will be to drive global GDP to close to four percent in 2018 and years following.
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, January 26, 2018:
Workers at Camp Construction, the construction giant headquartered in Houston with sites all across the southern United States, received a note along with their last paycheck. Signed by the company’s president, Roger Camp, it read:
Because of the reduction in corporate taxes we, as will all businesses, benefit from this tax cut. We believe that YOU are the reason for our success. And now that we will be giving less of our hard earned income to the federal government, we can share some of it with you.
Please look for a $500 tax cut bonus in your next payroll run.
There are now more than 240 companies who are doing the same for their employees. At current count this will brighten the paydays of more than three million workers.
And the ripple effect of the tax reform law is just starting to be felt.
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, January 19, 2018:
This is an old chart of US GDP. Get ready for the next leg up
On Thursday The New American speculated about the impact of Apple’s repatriation of its overseas profit hoard of some $250 billion and where Apple intends to invest some of it. It raised questions about the $2.5 trillion in profits that is still held overseas by American companies unwilling to subject those profits to the United States’ outrageously high income tax rates.
With Apple’s decision, and the repatriation tax rate of just 15.5 percent in the new tax law, some of those questions can be addressed.
First,
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, January 19, 2018:
After paying the world’s largest tax bill – $38 billion – Apple, Inc., the world’s largest company by market capitalization and now the government’s largest taxpayer, will have $214 billion left over.
It is making plans for that $214 billion. In its announcement on Wednesday, the company said it would be making “a new set of investments to build on its commitment to support the American economy and its workforce, concentrated in three areas where Apple has had the greatest impact on job creation: direct employment by Apple, spending and investment with Apple’s domestic suppliers and manufacturers, and fueling the fast-growing app economy that Apple created with iPhone® and the App Store®.”
It added:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, January 8, 2018:
There were three jobs reports released last week: two from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (one based on its “household” survey, the other on its “establishment” survey), and one from ADP based upon its payroll data.
ADP’s numbers came in first on Thursday, showing job growth in December exceeding forecasters’ predictions at 250,000. This was followed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report on Friday, showing 148,000 new jobs in December. They both said that the unemployment rate held steady at a record low 4.1 percent.
Mark Zandi, the establishment economist at Moody’s, was “disappointed” in Friday’s numbers from the BLS and thinks they’re going to get worse going into the New Year. First,
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, October 26, 2017:
Headquarters of Aramco Services Company
Saudi Aramco CEO Armin Nasser told CNBC’s Squawk Box on Sunday that he wasn’t at all worried about American frackers, since they are concentrating on “sweet spots” — the richest fields with the highest returns — which can’t last forever: “The concentration that we are seeing today [by American frackers] is on the sweet spot of shale, and this will not last forever. You can concentrate for some time on the sweet spots and produce more oil. But ultimately you need to venture downward, and that’s where you have less quality and you require more cost to produce these barrels. Shale oil will contribute additional barrels [to world crude oil supplies], but it will all depend on the price of crude.”
Nasser no doubt was referring to data released last week that showed
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Wednesday, October 11, 2017:
OPEC headquarters in Vienna
Free market economists have long considered OPEC as a textbook example of the anti-free market cartel. Its mission statement confirms it:
To coordinate and unify the petroleum policies of its member countries and ensure the stabilization of oil markets, in order to secure an efficient, economic, and regular supply of petroleum to consumers, a steady income to producers, and a fair return on capital for those investing in the petroleum industry.
This is of course the “siren song” of every cartel:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Monday, September 11, 2017:
Estimates are that Hurricane Irma knocked out the power to nearly six million Floridians’ homes and businesses, while both Harvey and Irma have either destroyed or heavily damaged 300,000 homes in Texas and hundreds of thousands more in Florida. Further estimates are that these two massive storms have reduced demand for oil by nearly a million barrels a day.
This is being reflected in the price of NYMEX (New York Mercantile Exchange) crude oil dropping to $47 a barrel early Monday. Last Wednesday crude was selling at more than $49.
Part of the problem facing OPEC and its grand plan to cut production to raise oil prices was its assumption that
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Friday, August 18, 2017:
Tesla Roadster Sport 2.5, the fourth-generation Roadster from electric carmaker Tesla Motors Inc.
Morgan Stanley, the international banking behemoth, released the results of its study on the best “green” companies in which to invest. This is based, said the bank, on the assumptions that some, perhaps many, investors who have drunk the “green Kool-Aid” want to invest in ways to “save” the environment and fight against “climate change.” Missing from the top of their list is perhaps the most visible “green” automobile company: Tesla, Inc., formerly known as Tesla Motors.
After comparing the savings in carbon dioxide (CO2) achieved by Tesla’s high-mileage electric vehicles to all the “secondary and tertiary” factors involved in their manufacture, Morgan Stanley said,
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, August 4, 2017:
Image of Autonomous Robot From Second Grand Challenge Advancing to Urban Challenge.
The crux of the anti-capitalist cabal’s complaint about the robotic revolution taking place all across the country is this: since robots can do anything that a human can do, everyone’s job is on the chopping block. So how do they explain the simple bald fact that warehousing jobs – where much of the robotic revolution is taking place – have increased? A year ago there were 867,300 people employed in warehousing. Today that number is approaching 950,000. And Apple is looking to add thousands more. How is that possible?
Part of the answer of course is
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, August 3, 2017:
Factory Automation with industrial robots for palletizing food products like bread and toast at a bakery in Germany,
SAM, the Semi-Automated Mason, can be seen on YouTube laying bricks alongside human masons. While SAM can, according to contractors, lay around 2,000 bricks a day compared to an average of 600 to 700 for a human mason, the video illustrates a key point missed by many: It shows human workers programmming SAM and providing it the bricks and mud and following behind cleaning up after it. In other words, SAM, produced by Construction Robotics, isn’t replacing masons, it is making them more efficient and saving their backs.
A year ago, Rick Cohen, the founder of Symbotic LLC, which develops autonomous robots for warehouses, said,
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, August 2, 2017:
The sanctions imposed by the State Department on Venezuela’s Marxist dictator Nicolas Maduro and his regime are being carefully staged in to maximize the pain inflicted on Maduro and his cronies, while minimizing the impact on the citizens of the country.
Last week State imposed sanctions on 13 of Maduro’s top people, accusing them of various human rights violations and, as a result, freezing any assets they might have within American jurisdiction. Following Sunday’s fraudulent election, State imposed similar sanctions on Maduro himself, freezing any assets he might personally have in the United States.
Although it’s unknown just how much, if any, of Maduro’s personal wealth would be affected by those new sanctions, what is known is that they
This article was published by The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor on Friday, July 7, 2017:
MarketWatch
Malcolm Frank is one of those rarest of futurists: He sees what’s coming and writes clearly about what to do about it. In his What to do When Machines do Everything: How to get Ahead in a World of AI, Algorithms, Bots and Big Data, Frank discusses the massive upheavals businesses are going through as they try to keep up and stay profitable.
One issue he doesn’t discuss is how to measure the new economy’s output.
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Wednesday, June 7, 2017:
The sugar settlement between the United States and Mexico, announced on Tuesday by U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, sets the stage for the NAFTA “renegotiation” scheduled to begin in August. And the settlement is going to cost Americans more to satisfy their sweet tooths.
At bottom, it’s all about protecting an inefficient American industry from foreign competition. Sugar is an enormous industry, and economic and political interests want to keep protections in place in order to save it from foreign competition. On one side is Big Sugar:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, June 1, 2017:
Map of northern Alaska showing location of , ANWR-1002 area, and the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA).
Following a six-day trip to northern Alaska, Trump’s Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke signed an order on Wednesday in Anchorage that reverses a 2013 Obama administration executive order. That 2013 order removed half of the immense National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA) on Alaska’s North Slope from consideration for energy development. Said Zinke:
This article appeared online at TheNewAmerican.com on Thursday, May 25, 2017:
China GDP
Moody’s Investors Service, one of the big three credit-rating services in the country, downgraded China’s creditworthiness one full notch on Wednesday. It moved the world’s second-largest economy from Aa3 (“high quality [with] very low risk”) to A1 (Upper-medium grade [with] low credit risk”). It explained why:
The downgrade reflects Moody’s expectations that China’s financial strength will erode somewhat over the coming years, with economy-wide debt continuing to grow as potential growth slows.
That “potential growth” has been slowing since at least 2010. In that year Chinese government agencies reported growth in excess of 10 percent. By 2014, it had slowed to 7.3 percent, to 6.9 percent in 2015, and is now at a reported 6.7 percent.
Moody’s is late to the game.
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