US Consumer -- The US Is The Global Engine Of Growth -- September 19, 2024

Locator: 48324ECONOMY. 

US consumer, link here:

The meme: if the Fed cut rates by 50 basis points, the US economy must be in worse shape than we're being told.

I simply don't agree with that; I don't see that. The key word: "recalibration." 

Regardless.

Let's look at it this way. Binary.

The economy is in worse shape than they are telling us. Okay. The Fed did the right thing, cutting by 50 basis points.

The economy is doing much better than folks realize. The Goldilocks economy. Okay. The Fed sees the "need" / "opportunity" to "recalibrate" / "normalize" its effect on the economy. 

In either case, by reducing rates, the Fed's actions will "goose" the economy.

I go back to this post:

Easy money: the question is now being raised -- should "easy money" be the norm? The economy took off (excelled) when the US had twelve years of easy money; April, 2008 -- September, 2022. Actually 14 years. A generation of Americans have only known "easy money." It becomes an even more fascinating question when we look at the real reason for inflation. Was Paul Krugman right all along? Even Steve Liesman is willing to play along, entertaining that thought.

Or was it simply about easily accessible, easily affordable, dispatchable energy?

Let's not overthink this.

The EU's crude oil production:

At the end of the day, it's still a global economy. The economy of the US is head and shoulders ahead of whatever else is out there. The UK, as an example, is in great trouble, and despite that, England's central bank did not lower rates today. Meanwhile, the US in great shape, and the Fed cuts by a surprising 50 basis points. On CNBC just a few minutes ago (do folks remember Meredith Whitney from decades ago)?

Carl Q: should the Fed have cut the rate by 50 basis points?

Meredith Whitney: absolutely. I was surprised but absolutely the Fed should have cut rates by 50 basis points, and it needs to get to a 100-bp cut as soon as possible, certainly by the end of the year.

It is interesting that every talking head / analyst / economist that I've heard speak in the past eighteen hours agrees that the 50-bp cut was the right thing to do. Even those who expected a 25-bp cut enthusiastically support the 50-bp cut. I have never paid much attention (in the past) to those who are now arguing that the Fed should have left rates alone, or even, perhaps, even have raised them. 

The above charts are simply amazing.

One more:

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CNBC

The biggest problem I have with CNBC today is all the time spent "arguing" about the pros and cons of the 50-basis point cut. Who cares. They did it. The Fed cut the "rate" by 50 basis points.

The question is not whether it was the right thing to do, but rather, "now what?" What do investors do now that the Fed has cut rates by 50 basis points.

"Sports radio" / "sports television" revolves almost entirely around the Dallas Cowboys and more specifically Jerry Jones and Dak Prescott.

That's what CNBC has turned into: the producers / anchors has turned the conversation into following the Fed 24/7. Wow. 

By the way, "zombie companies" are now getting a lot of attention. The most obvious "zombie companies": shipping easy-to-prepare food meals for humans and for their pets. Whatever happened to Blue Apron? Years ago, I occasionally saw Blue Apron boxes delivered to our 700-unit complex. Now, I haven't seen a Blue Apron box in years. One renter is buying Chewy on a regular basis, but that's about it now. I know I'm missing many of the deliveries but .... 

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Carl Rowan

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The Book Page

This book is recently in the news again. Oh, that's right. Top 100 books of the 21st century. Here was my take on the book back in 2008. Coincidentally there is a four-page essay on Yuval Noah Harari in the October, 2024, issue of The Atlantic. Link here. After reading that essay, I find his views / writings still a bunch of crap. I wonder if he's read any of Virginia Woolf's works? 

An aside: The [London] Guardian's list of 100 books is so much better than the New York Times list.

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The Book Page
What a Bunch of Crap

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari, c. 2015. First published in Hebrew in Israel in 2011. A New York Times bestseller. Recommended by everyone, including Bill Gates and Barack Obama. Author: a PhD in history from the University of Oxford.

A few weeks ago our oldest granddaughter was telling me how one of her teachers was talking about the "agricultural revolution" as a fantasy and that, in fact, the "agricultural revolution" left humankind more worse-off than what they had as foragers and hunter-gatherers. I thought the instructor was an idiot, but I didn't say anything negative. I continued to listen to Arianna's theses and arguments.

And then here it, almost verbatim, from Sapiens by Harari, pp. 78+, exactly what Arianna was saying. I am not convinced. But I am thrilled that this suggests to me that her instructor is well-read, and, in fact, has probably read this book and this is where he/she is getting some of his/her ideas.

It also means this is a great resource book for Arianna for this particular class and this particular author. Despite the fact that the book is pathetic; a bunch of crap. This is the author's theme, found on page 415 in the afterword:

Unfortunately, the Sapiens regime on earth has so far produced little that we can be proud of. We have mastered our surroundings, increased food production, built cities, established empires and created far-flung trade networks. But did we decrease the amount of suffering in the world? Time and again, massive increases in human power did not necessarily improve the well-being of individual Sapiens, and usually caused immense misery to other animals.

It's a great resource book as long as Arianna is capable of critical thinking.

Again, from the author: Unfortunately, the Sapiens regime on earth has so far produced little that we can be proud of.

I had my wife read that passage; she agreed. I must be missing something. 

Let's see:

• Carnegie libraries across the US
• vaccines eradicated smallpox, tetanus, and polio
• art by Monet
• Tesla
• the Bible, the Odyssey, the Iliad, the Aenied, Shakespeare
• the iPhone 
• martinis 
• the Kentucky Derby
• Olga Kern and the Santa Fe Orchestra
• life expectancy and quality of life
• Neil Armstrong 
• the Rolls Royce
• We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
• cowboy boots and cowboy hats
• equal rights for women 
• the horse would have gone extinct without Homo sapiens: Tim Winegard, 2024.
  

This shows me the lack of critical analysis by Barack Obama and Bill Gates and others who recommended this book. Of if I'm missing something, why they would recommend this?  I guess if you are an elitist ...

... by the way, I wonder whether the author would say the #1 cause of death worldwide is one of the good or bad things related to Sapiens?