Recession? What Recession? November 29, 2023

Locator: 46200B.

Note: change for the blog regarding links.

• in the past, it was my policy to "link everything";
• now, going forward, I will not "link everything." 
• it's taking up too much time and much of what I link is readily found anyway;
•  linking "everything": no value added.

Recession:

• all predictions over the past four years for a recession by 2023 are now officially wrong/dead and seen for what they were -- a misunderstanding of the macro-economy and the real cause of inflation post-Covid;
• that's not my conclusion: that's the conclusion of most analysts
  
• now, we start over: as of November 29, 2023 I'll be the first to call it: the US is headed for another recession.

Recession: most interesting -- some analysts are coming up with their own definition of a recession

• one analyst says simply: a recession is an increase in unemployment
• by that definition, he's sure to be correct sooner than later
• and, oh, by the way, he will always be correct -- recessions are a normal part of the business cycle.
  

GDP 3Q23: came in stronger than first indicated. 

Foot Locker: shares jump 100%; earnings beat; guidance upbeat. These are $300 shoes, folks. Recession. Americans running out of cash. BNPL.

WMT: shares down today. Say what? 

European inflation: drops faster than expected.

When you lose Consumer Reports:

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Lego Trains

Lego sells "Duplo trains."

In fact, Lego sells two broad categories of "Duplo trains."

The two categories are very, very different, and are differentiated by the color of their wheels.

One type of Duplo train has cars with red wheels; the other has cars with yellow wheels. Regardless of the type of wheels, cars with either type of wheels can be hooked together.

The Duplo train set with yellow wheels is meant to be pulled / pushed across the floor and not on tracks. Having said that, the yellow-wheel sets do have their own tracks.

Our grandsons have both sets, pretty much bought by mistake not realizing the two types were not meant to be joined together to run on tracks.

The Duplo train set with red wheels can be run on Lego tracks that can be designed in endless configurations, but the yellow-wheel cars can only run on a circular configuration.

The boys were bored with just running their trains in a circle.

Our grandsons were quite frustrated that not all their cars ran on tracks. If you look at the size of the wheels one can see why (yellow: very wide with dual flange; re: narrower with a single flange).

Our grandsons, age 3.5 years, noted:

• both types of cars (red wheels / yellow wheels) can run on flat, straight track of either kind, and both types of tracks can fit together;
• but the wider, double-flanged-yellow-wheel cars cannot run on curved tracks or bridges.

How do we know this?

Without any help from any adult, they put all their tracks together to make a large irregular oval. By trial and error (no doubt), they removed the curves/bridges of one type and replaced them with curves/bridges of the other type and managed to come up with a design that cars of both types could run on the irregular oval.  

This was their result. Note the mix of two type of track sections:

Note that cars with both types of wheels are running on the track.

Brilliant.