Unemployment Claims Jump 10,000; A Bit More Than Expected -- But Everything Remains Rosy -- Mainstream Media -- July 2, 2016; The Gay 20s

Jobs. The spin continues. Every headline, it seems, said the number of first time claims for unemployment insurance increased more than forecast, but yet that number / fact was left out of the story. Be that as it may, first time claims surged 10,000 in the report released a couple of days ago, June 30, 2016, link here and link here.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 268,000 for the week ended June 25, the Labor Department said on Thursday.

Claims for the prior week were revised to show 1,000 fewer applications received than previously reported. Last week's increase was in line with economists' expectations.

Claims have now been below 300,000, a threshold associated with a strong jobs market, for 69 consecutive weeks, the longest streak since 1973.

The four-week moving average of claims, considered a better measure of labor market trends as it irons out week-to-week volatility, was unchanged at 266,750 last week.

The New York Times had a large headline/story on same subject (linked above) but said about the same thing. All these stories have the same theme: despite the numbers, "everything is rosy." Whatever.

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The Gay 20s

Updates

Later, 12:34 p.m. The NBA's rich get richer. Hyper-rich to be more exact. 

Later, 7:41 a.m. Less than a couple hours of posting the note below about the gay 1920s and whether we might be seeing a repeat, the gay 2020s, Don sends me this note from the CBS Sunday Morning News. It was posted June 22, 2016, but I had not seen it (had I seen it, I would linked it with the original post), but apparently CBS had a segment on the Lindy Hop making a comeback:

The Lindy Hop was created in the 1920s in the dance halls of Harlem like the famous Savoy Ballroom. Now it's making an unlikely comeback among millennials. Michelle Miller has more. 

That was the extent of the story, but there is a great video at the link.

 

Original Post

 

I thought I might have blogged this but it appears I have not. I mentioned this to my wife some time ago that the tea leaves suggest that, at least for the US, the 2020s may be a repeat of the gay Jay Gatsby 1920s. The income discrepancies continue to widen (at least according to mainstream media) and it looks like the US economy might finally be turning the corner with regard to the Great Recession. There are some headwinds, but ...

I was reminded of that, and thought it best to get that posted, for the date-time stamp after reading this article in the Hollywood Reporter that The Drudge Report linked: 

With its fabric droptop and yacht-like cabin, the Dawn nods to Gatsby-era luxury on a thoroughly modern plaform (sic). [Yes, that typo was in the headline.]

Earlier this year, Rolls announced it was phasing out its $400,000-plus flagship Phantom sedan, coupe and drophead (Brit-speak for 'convertible'). Taking the place of the drophead in the Rolls stable is Dawn, a new purpose-built convertible just hitting the streets after months of mostly justified fawning in the automotive press for its fetching looks and, as I can attest having driven one to and from Malibu recently, taught handling and impeccable road manners.

This newest of Rollers is what Jay Gatsby would have called a cream puff, but that would miss the intent of Rolls as it balances its future on the knife-edge of pleasing its traditional customers, many of them born in the Truman administration, and forty-ish freespenders who like their luxury with lashings of performance. [Truman presidency: 1945 - 1953, my generation, exactly.]

Rolls-Royce has taken pains to differentiate its current lineup, conceived under BMW, its owner since 2008, from the wheezing image as portrayed by Dudley Moore in 1981's Arthur: a sodden prat given to haranguing the hoi poloi from his chauffeur-driven Rolls Silver Wraith. The brief: create a suite of cars plausible for a younger, hipper demographic without tarnishing the brand's bullet-proof superpremium legacy, a tall order that archrival (and Volkswagen-owned) Bentley accomplished a decade ago with its Flying Spur and Continental but for Rolls remains a work in progress. (Bentley's first $229,000 Bentayga SUV went to Queen Elizabeth but a Rolls SUV is still at least a year away.)

Rolls 2.0 began to hit its stride in 2013 with the introduction of the rakish Ghost, Rolls's $300,000 answer to Bentley's $200,00 Flying Spur, and its really rakish fastbacked Wraith, that borrowed its name but almost nothing else from Arthur's bloated ride. Wraith has since been embraced by wealthy Silicon Valley gearheads and young Hollywood players unconflicted about dropping 300 large on what is sometimes their second or third ride: Kylie Jenner recently added a nail-polish-red Wraith to her motor pool, which already comprises a Ghost and a Ferrari 458, and commemorated the acquisition with celebratory snaps on Snapchat.

Dawn shares Wraith's high belt-line and rear-hinged "suicide" doors, and by any reasonable measure would appear to be Wraith repurposed as a svelte convertible. No so, protests Rolls, although the family similarity is inevitable, given that Dawn shares with Wraith the iconic Rolls prow and Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament, not to mention the 568 hp twin-turbo V-12 adapted from the engine used in the BMW 760i. But it is also evidence that Rolls is thinking like a modern car company: Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Audi and, yes, Bentley have been moving toward a company-wide, brand-defining aesthetic for years in which the new $42,000 Mercedes C300 looks like a three-quarter scale version of the $95,000 S550.

Much more at the link. Like I said, the gay 20s may repeat. The 1920s. The 2020s.