Notes From All Over -- The Evening Edition -- June 16, 2021

"We" either need to improve "auto-correct" in text messages OR some of us need new reading glasses.

My wife was asked by a friend if she could pick up her daughter from an after-school program. My wife read the message to say that her friend's sister had died. 

Pretty sad. 

But really, really wrong.

When my wife offered condolences to her friend, she learned that her friend's sister had not died. 

Her sitter had quit. 

And we move on. 

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"Fed" Analysis

Best "lesson" I learned all day: forecasting inflation is the most difficult task an economist has. It is impossible to predict inflation, and some entities are particularly bad at predicting inflation, e.g., "the Fed." 

Predicting inflation, like predicting the price of oil, is a fool's errand. 

On another note, good, bad, or indifferent, whether you like Jim Cramer or hate him or somewhere in between, Jim Cramer is very, very supportive of Jay Powell. I've been listening to Jim Cramer almost daily for the past month, and on this one, jobs, minimum wages, inflation, perhaps even UBI, etc., Jim Cramer has been consistent and agrees with Jay Powell. "If a little inflation is necessary to help improve the job market, then a little inflation is fine."

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New Federal Holiday

By this time next year, we will have a new federal holiday: Juneteenth, which will only be two weeks or so earlier than another independence day.

Thank you, Texas. 

From wiki:

Originating in Galveston, Texas, it is now celebrated annually on June 19 throughout the United States, with increasing official recognition. 

It is commemorated on the anniversary date of the June 19, 1865, announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger, proclaiming freedom from slavery in Texas.

President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 had officially outlawed slavery in Texas and the other states that had rebelled against the Union almost two and a half years earlier.

 Enforcement of the Proclamation generally relied on the advance of Union troops.

Texas, as the most remote of the slave states had seen an expansion of slavery, and had a low presence of Union troops as the American Civil War ended; thus enforcement there had been slow and inconsistent prior to Granger's announcement.

Although the Emancipation Proclamation declared an end to slavery in the Confederate States, slavery was still legal and practiced in two Union border states – Delaware and Kentucky – until December 6, 1865, when ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolished chattel slavery nationwide.

Additionally, Indian Territories that had sided with the Confederacy, namely the Choctaw, were the last to release those enslaved, in 1866.

Celebrations date to 1866, at first involving church-centered community gatherings in Texas.