How many Americans know that America has privatized prisons, the shares of which are listed on stock exchanges? Free market ideologues provided cover for corrupt Republican politicians to divert taxpayers’ hard-earned money to favored political insiders with the false claim that prisons run by private owners are more cost effective. A Mother Jones reporter took a job as a private prison guard and found that private prisons are places of unimaginable violence.
In addition to the Employment Situation Summary for August from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, last week also saw the release of four July reports that give us the lion's share of that month's contribution to 3rd quarter GDP, and in some cases suggest revisions to 2nd quarter GDP. This post reviews those four reports, with an eye to assessing their impact on GDP growth.
Your government is on red alert: between 2006 and 2014, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), an agency of the Department of Agriculture, spent nearly $4.8 million to purchase shotguns, propane cannons, liquid explosives, pyro supplies, drones, thermal imaging cameras, and more.
The August 2016 unemployment report shows a fairly underwhelming month of statistics, yet not as bad as some in the press would have you believe. The unemployment rate remained the same at 4.9%, the third month in a row. Generally speaking August was no change from July. Both the labor participation rate and the civilian to employment ratio did not change. The number of people employed was low and similar to the number of those unemployed.
Trump and Hillary have come out with the obligatory “economic plans.” Neither them nor their advisors, have any idea about what really needs to be done, but this is of no concern to the media.
The presstitutes operate according to “pay and say.” They say what they are paid to say and that is whatever serves the corporations and the government. This means that the presstitutes like Hillary’s economic plan and do not like Trump’s.
Traditionally presidential election campaigns are said to begin in earnest after Labor Day, but with the mutual rancor between the two parties and their candidates, things should heat up right away now that both conventions are over.
The Federal Reserve Industrial Production & Capacity Utilization report shows industrial production had a 0.7% blowout for July. This is the largest increase since November 2014. Manufacturing production by itself increased 0.5% and was the biggest advance since July 2015. Even mining increased 0.7% for the month. Utilities' 2.1% increase was due to the very warm weather.
Wednesday's release of US oil data for the week ending July 15th by the US Energy Information Administration indicated that our oil imports rebounded back to above recent averages, that our refineries ramped back up to seasonal levels to use all of those extra imports, and as a result another small portion of our monstrous glut of crude oil was converted into a glut of refined products.
The Consumer Price Index had no change for July. Food inflation was a big fat zero and energy costs dropped another -1.6% for the month. Inflation with food and energy price changes removed increased 0.1% with shelter and medical costs once again driving the increase. From a year ago overall CPI has risen 0.8%.
Oil prices crashed along with global financial markets on Friday following the British vote on Thursday to exit the European Union (typically referred to as "Brexit"), which is widely expected to precipitate a period of political instability in Europe.
July 2016 retail sales were a real Wall Street let down as there was no change from June. Gasoline sales plunged by -2.7%, yet most retailers had declining sales. Auto sales and Amazon prime day were not enough to salvage overall retail sales. Without autos & parts sales, retail sales would have dropped by -0.3% for the month.
On Monday of last week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration posted an article on their daily blog (Today in Energy) titled "United States remains largest producer of petroleum and natural gas hydrocarbons".. The article featured a graph of our production of gas and oil vis a vis that of Russia and Saudi Arabia and went on to tell the familiar story about how fracking made it possible for our output of gas and oil to pass that of Russia in 2012
The BLS Productivity & Costs report for Q2 2016 shows labor productivity decreased -0.5% annualized. Output increased 1.2% and hours worked increased 1.8%. Unit Labor costs increased only 0.5% in Q2 2015. The reason labor productivity declined was because economic output grew less than worked hours. For the 2015 year, annual productivity rose 0.9%.
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