DEFINING A RECESSION

 A recession is generally defined as two successive quarters which register negative economic growth, as measured by the GDP (gross domestic product).   The GDP tallies up all the sources of business activity and puts out a number indicating how much growth or lack of it has occurred over the last three months.  A negative number indicates that business activity has slowed, sales slack off, orders decline, and ultimately jobs, and salary increases dry up too.  Folks who had jobs and the feeling that all is going good in the world don’t fell that way any longer and it takes a long while to get he engines of the economy going again. 

The news for this second quarter is not good and new definitions of “recession” have been pouring out of DC.  The President and his crowd would rather redefine a problem away than actually do something about it.   For them Afghanistan was “just fine “ and the border is “closed and sealed”.  Thus in the last few days just before the second quarter GDP numbers are about to come out—this Thursday—-the President and his treasury secretary Janet Yellin are hard at work trying to soft soap the expected bad news and redefine the problem away.

But some facts are hard to sweep under the rug like the “irregular immigrants” Biden is spreading around the nation with secret night flights.  

I read in Bloomberg Business Report, July 25, 2022, that Walmart, the world’s largest retail store,  has revealed some troubling news.  Its stock shares have tumbled from $132 per share to $118 dollars per share. This news shocked  the market. But worse it also cut its predicted earnings per share for the year by as much as 13%.  Why?  Because business does not look profitable when you have loads of goods no one is buying  

Walmart has been hit hard because it serves the average shopper. These folks have been hit hard by high inflation—-the surging prices of food and fuel—. These shoppers in the lower economic bracket—have had to cut back on Walmart purchases because “Biden’s inflation” has them in a pickle. They spend a greater percentage of their earnings on food and fuel than people in Biden’s or Pelosi’s income category.   The surging high prices of fuel and food leave them much less to spend on other items.  And this decline in spending has left the retail giant with $60 billion dollars in unsold product.  (Target has hit the skids too and has a backlog of $15 billion dollars of unsold product).

What does this mean?  Recession.  

Both Walmart and Target together with a combined backlog of $75billion dollars of  unsold “stuff’ which they are storing on site and probably are not going to sell are not in the market right now (or in the near future) to order more stuff….are they?  

The result is that the thousands of small companies around the nation that make Walmart’s“stuff”….are not going to get any new orders from Walmart or Target soon.  What will these many companies do?  

They will slow down production, lay off staff, close down units.  and some may close their doors.  That is what a negative GDP means—-a slow down or lack of business activity.

That’s what happens in a recession.   

Thank’s Joe and Janet, but no need for your new definitions of recession and denials and word games—the nation knows already what is coming..hard times.  

UKRAINE: A DIFFERENT VIEW

JULY 25, 2022

Ukraine is a big country in Eastern Europe, nuzzled up to Russia’s southwestern border. It comprises an area comparable in size to Germany and Poland  combined,  but with a population of only 41 million.  Ukraine is a land of low relief and fertile plains dominated by the drainage basin of Dnieper River which neatly bisects the nation.  Ukraine’s west is much like our own Midwest where agriculture and grain fields dominate. Only small areas of highlands occur in the southwest where  a small sliver of the Carpathian Mountains courses along borderlands with Moldova.  In the east and southeast the nation borders the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. This coastal region is more hilly and is the nation’s industrial heartland.  

It is along this eastern rim, in a region known as the “Donbas” (a contraction of: “Donets Coal Basin”) where coal has long been mined particularly from the Soviet era, and where iron and steel are produced. In this area are many industries which construct machinery and also other diverse industries are located.  Here too are the maritime and found rail transportation hubs.  The Donbas  and the neighboring Luhansk regions are heavily industrialized and are the source of much of the nation’s raw materials and fossil fuels, including coal, petroleum, natural gas and the area has a high potential for production of shale-oil and gas.  These eastern regions also have rich deposits of rare and much sought after minerals such as lithium, titanium, and graphite.  In addition,  extremely valuable deposits of “rare earth minerals” such as cerium, yttrium, lanthanum, and neodymium are also known to have exploitable deposits here.   These latter resources are in great demand for use  in the manufacture of rechargeable batteries, cellphones and similar modern electronic devices.  Furthermore, the seabed of the  Black Sea along the eastern coast is known to have significant reserves of natural gas. 

Without these eastern industrial provinces, Ukraine would become a largely agricultural,  resource-and-industry-poor, landlocked nation.  It is the Donbas and the fossil fuels in the sea bed of the Black Sea that are being fought over in the Ukraine. 

These facts suggest why the USA has up to the present date spent some $60 billion dollars in military-aid for Ukraine. This is an effort to control the outcome of the war and to ultimately control and exploit Ukraine.  And is also the reason why Russia opposes those objectives.  Both nations covet the raw materials and rare earth minerals in Ukraine, and both are motivated to deny access of these valuable resources to the other they see as an economic and political adversary. 

What about the war raging there now for months ?

In the USA, President Biden, the titular “head of the free world”  is a weak, befuddled old man, who hardly remembers where and who he is. His caretaker presidency is now widely considered ended, and even Biden’s progressive supporters are anticipating his departure. 

It was this befuddled old man with a shuffling gate, stenosis of major cerebral arteries, atrial fibrillation, and a fifty year history of poor decision-making who led the supposedly more intelligent, younger and more experienced European leadership to follow his lead as he took them over the cliff of “Russian sanctions” into certain economic ruin. 

The horror of this story is that Biden was in good part actually complicit in the Russian invasion itself. This President was fully appraised months in advance of Putin’s plans and knew of Putin’s objections to the US policy of making neighboring Ukraine a US bastion of western militarism and a NATO member.   Knowing this, instead of active diplomacy, he raised an arthritic, crooked middle digit into Putin’s face, and abandoned any effort at diplomacy and compromise.  He could have prevented this war and the invasion— many claim he encouraged it.   

Then, once Putin invaded— Biden proposed a simpleminded and disastrous strategy for “winning” the Ukraine war that has led the world into economic and political turmoil…and Ukraine into human tragedy, death and massive destruction. 

What were Biden’s  four “pillars” strategy?  1) The assumption that Ukraine could win the war, against a far more powerful Russia; 2) that  sanctions  would weaken Russia and destabilize its leadership; 3) that sanctions would hurt Russia so grievously that it would give up and accept the humiliation of an heavily armed  NATO nation on its doorstep; 4) and that the rest oft the world would accept the sanctions and line up against Russia and support the west.    

None of these assumptions  have played out the way Biden hoped. (See: Reuters July 23, 2022, report on Victor Orban speech on the War in Ukraine) 

It is clear that Ukraine is losing and Russia is winning the conflict. Russia has gobbled up the entire eastern 1/5 of that nation, which includes Ukraine’s industrial heartland.  Russia has control of the coastline of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov and the sea lanes and ports of those regions. Russia now has control of the valuable sub-surface oil and gas resources found in the Black Sea marine subsurface and intends to keep them.  

Biden’s  sanctions have hurt, but they have hurt everyone. Europe and the US as well as Russia.  Sanctions are biting much deeper in Europe where the the dependence on Russian energy is greatest and the very real possibility of either complete shut down of gas deliveries or drastic spikes in price coupled with shortages of oil, and diesel fuel, will occur. As for natural gas, its price today (July 25, 2022)is up to 120% of what it was before the war.   Europe is expecting a cold winter, and with it cold homes, tepid bath water, closed manufacturing plants and rolling blackouts due to shortages and high prices of fossil fuels. There is no indication of Putin losing support at home,  in fact according to Bloomberg .com a Russian poll of July 14. 2022 reported Putin’s popularity in Russia at 83%…a far cry from Biden’s 33% approval rate. 

 The rest of the world is not cooperating with the Biden plan of self defeating sanctions.  In fact most of Asia, (except Japan and South Korea), all of South America (even Mexico) and all the nations on the continent of Africa and Middle East have ignored the Biden sanctions against Russia.  India and China, the most populous nations on earth both continue to have robust economic interactions with Russia.  Even Saudi Arabia continues to buy Russian oil…at a discount, then resell it as if it was their own, at a much higher price…making a tidy profit on the deal.  The value of the Russian ruble has hit the highest level in decades in recent months. 

The Biden strategy is a failure that has hurt the west more than its target nation. There is no good reason to continue this war…only more death, more hardship and more economic pain will result.  Then too the danger of military “mission creep” or war escalation occurring as a result of  the west supplying more and more weapons and the Russians responding with more targeted areas is very dangerous.  

With two nuclear armed adversaries fighting a proxy war the world could very easily misstep into a third world war.  Can we be that stupid to fall into a WWIII? 

FALLING GAS PRICE AT PUMP…GOOD NEWS? NO!!

 JULY 23, 2022  

Cheap gas results from decreased demand and a slowing economy. Not good news. 

President Biden has been bragging today from his basement desk in the White House about falling gasoline prices.  The national average has dropped down to $4.60 this week.  A great deal higher than when he took office.   But the pain remains.  Dr Jill (FLOTUS) on a tour in a Democratic stronghold in Connecticut, got an ear-full from one of that state’s irate citizens still hurting from the high cost of diesel and gasoline. This person heckled her as she tried to enter an ice cream shop with: “Dr. Jill….You and your husband owe us gas money!.”  

Gasoline prices have fallen a bit from the steep $5.00 plus, only a few weeks back.  But  there is no cause for celebration.   Here is why. 

First of all…the price at the pump these days is not quite the real price.  Let us not forget that Joe is still pumping one million barrels of sweet Texas crude each day from our national emergency reserves. That amount has had its effect by artificially increasing supply,  but will not be a permanent fix.  At the present time (under Joe Biden) we import about 8.5 million barrels of oil a day.  In March, President Biden began a release of one million barrels a day from our strategic petroleum reserves. That increase in supply cuts the amount we import to only 7.5 million barrels each day or in effect permits us to decrease imported oil by about 12% (1/8.5 = 0.117 =  about 12% of the total).  If the draw down of oil added to our supply had a comparable effect on price at the pump, the pump price should have dropped by about 12% or about 60 cents —or about the drop in price at the pump we are now experiencing.  Though I suspect that is not the whole story. 

Secondly…for many blue states…like New York and Connecticut— the fear of “gas-price ” angry voters at the polls in a few months has caused Democrat governors  to suspend taking  their state tax on gasoline.  The state taxes vary, but a few weeks back President Biden also proposed to eliminate collecting the Federal gas tax on gasoline at least up to September. That tax amounts to 18 cents per gallon. That amount (0.18 cents) accounts for almost one-half of the 40 cents drop in price experienced these last weeks. 

But these price drops are only temporary, and sadly will return with a big shock when the “unnecessary and unwise wasting” of our strategic reserve ends in September and we have to refill it with more expensive oil. And the state and federal gas taxes will surely be reinstated as they must be. 

So there is a great deal less to brag about than we might expect from listening to the President. 

But that is not all. The price of commodities like petroleum and gasoline are closely tied to demand, when demand drops so does the price.  Gasoline prices fall with an increasing supply—or a-decrease in demand.  There is no indication that petroleum supply has increased (excepting the artificial increase of oil from the Biden release of petroleum reserve oil). 

For that reason, falling gasoline prices should concern us all, since it means the demand for fuel has decreased.  THAT SUGGESTS A LOOMING RECESSION.    In a recession gasoline is always cheap. Who needs gasoline when you have no job to go to, can not afford to go out to dine, or take a vacation in Florida, and there is little need for diesel fuel and tractors when no new buildings going up, no extra fields to plow and plant, and no  new clients need transport from the airport—-and so forth.  

FALLING gas prices mean a decrease in demand and that is not good news for Biden…and for the suffering citizens of this nation as well. 

Thus Joe, bragging about falling gasoline prices is like Dr. Fauci bragging that he helped support the research at the Wuhan lab where the Corona virus might have escaped.         

Biden is fully culpable for the high gas prices.  First he intentionally reduced fuel supply at home by undermining  the US petroleum industry on his first days in office. That decreased US supply and increased price at the pump.    Then in March of this year he sanctioned Russia’s oil supply which simply reduced world supply and sharply increased prices even further.  So what is so irritating about his policies is their stupidity. Today he is releasing oil stored in our strategic reserve (which will have to be replaced) when 18 months ago he could have simply left the fossil fuel industry do its thing and we would have had plenty of oil—and perhaps no looming recession as well. . 

When you pay $80 bucks for a fill up at the pump today rather than the $50 you had been paying before Joe took over…remember why.  Thirty bucks out of your pocket just for Joe’s incompetence!! 

ON TRANSGENDERS, NCAA, WOMAN OF THE YEAR, AND TWO PREGNANT INMATES

July 20, 2022

The University of Pennsylvania recently nominated Lia Thomas, a now infamous transgender swimmer, as NCAA “Woman of the Year”.  Lia who, while competing as a male swimmer was only “an also ran” but, as a female competing with women,  won every competition she entered. Her season record only underscored with finality  the well-documented physical advantages of long-term exposure to testosterone. 

 The NCAA (National College Athletic Association) Woman of the Year award was created in 1991 to honor graduating female athletes who have demonstrated outstanding qualities in their sport, and academic achievement.  Lia certainly did stand out in her competition, and had a winning season.  Given the rules, the award had to go to her. 

However, as expected the announcement engendered a public outcry. The award and the public disapproval it generated illustrates how fixated we have recently become regarding: gender, sex-orientation, “Woke” as well as equity, diversity, and inclusion matters.  Then too the rules leave us hide-bound and impotent in our response due to their conflicting imperatives.   

The U/Penn award revolves around questions of gender, which was once strictly an anatomical and chromosomal matter. Today, “gender”divorced from human anatomy,  allosomal chromosomes, biology, physiology, or organic chemistry, has in some quarters, been reduced to only “how one feels”.  If Lia “feels” like a “she” and convinces herself she “should be a woman”, she has an option of being pumped up with female hormones.  As a competitive swimmer, after only several months of pre-competition female hormone therapy, the NCAA and Title XI rules make it clear —impractical as they are— that  if she “feels” like a woman she can compete as a “female”. 

These “rules” leave most of us in conflict and confusion.  Although NCAA outlaws the use of other athletic performance enhancing drugs, chemicals and hormones, it ignores hormonal treatments for transgender athletes.  A male athlete injecting physiologically active chemicals to enhance performance would be cast out of competition and perhaps even sanctioned for poor sportsmanship. Yet they permit a swimmer with a life long exposure to testosterone to compete as a female after only several months of hormone replacement therapy.   

These frought, difficult decisions must have had the NCAA U/Penn awards committee biting their nails down to stubs.  The committee finally succumbed to public pressure from certain quarters. Their decision ignored the accomplishments of U/Penn biologically female swimmers (who were at a anatomical and physiological disadvantage) and supported a transgender swimmer for the award.  

But outside of the Ivy League “progressive bubble” other, perhaps more practical and science based responses seem to hold sway. Take the case of the New Jersey Corrections Department.  Not far away, and on nearly the same day as the 2022 Woman of the Year announcement, the New Jersey, state correctional system was forced to respond to another transgender situation.  They faced a problem at an all-female correctional institution, where a (formerly male ) transgender inmate managed to successfully impregnate two female inmates.  Officials were faced with continuing to imprison the transgender female who persisted in impregnating biologically female inmates, or face biological reality and move the offending inmate elsewhere. 

After some delay (two pregnancies) the “culprit” was duly transferred to a “male only” correctional wing of the institution.  In this case the NJ correctional system acted to protect its female inmate population.  Faced with the actual consequences of biology in action—as well as the extra medical expenses and costly care for its now pregnant female inmates—the officials were forced to act—and did so in a fair and logical way. 

Does this clarify the problem for some?   In New Jersey, biology counts more than just how a person “feels”.  Not so in neighboring Pennsylvania.  There, though the consequences in the Lia Thomas award resulted in —no “baby bumps”, and there were no glaringly obvious consequences of “biology in action”—at least to the officials, who were faced only with a embarrassingly successful transgender swimmer competing with females.  

Thus in one case, New Jersey officials were forced to respect and respond to raw biological exigencies.  In the other, officials could remain oblivious to lack of fairness, emotional pain, and damage to careers, as well as the future athletic performances of the female athletes they passed up.

Isn’t it time to treat everyone with equality and dignity, both minority and majority?  Is it not time to return to “science” which governs our biological lives? And when we do let us underscore the fact that “feelings” are subjective and changeable and should be not be weighed as equal with actual anatomy, allosomal chromosomes, and hormonal physiology.    

Ask those two pregnant inmates…...  

Ukraine et Borrell: L'Europe devrait ignorer Borrell.

 Josep Borrell, vice-président de la Commission européenne et haut représentant de l'UE pour les affaires étrangères et la sécurité, a appelé les citoyens européens souffrants à "résister" et à continuer de soutenir la guerre en Ukraine même s'ils sont confrontés aux consequences économiques désagréables des prix exorbitants  pour la nourriture, le carburant automobile, le mazout domestique et le gaz naturel, ainsi qu'une hausse de l'inflation et une menace de récession.

Signore Borrell a fustigé les détracteurs de la guerre (qui prétendent que le conflit fait plus de mal aux Européens qu'aux Russes) en insistant sur le fait qu'ils doivent souffrir pour « ses principes » alors qu'il répond aux appels des Ukrainiens par : « Nous leur fournirons !  (armes).  Ajoutant, avec assurance : « La guerre va continuer ».

 Borrell qui réside dans un domaine d'un million d'euros à Valdemorillio, une banlieue chic de Madrid, mais se pose en "homme de la classe ouvrière", et un membre du parti "socialiste" soutient hypocritement les ‘irrational” politiques de M. Biden qui imposent la mort et la destruction à l'Ukraine et  désastre économique sur l'Europe.

 Pourtant, le socialiste Borrell s'est construit une vie confortable de «style capitaliste», installé de manière permanente et bien rémunérée dans une organisation gouvernementale d'État ou de l'UE ou autre pendant presque toutes ses 70 années et plus.  Il a même été inculpé et condamné à une lourde amende pour des irrégularités "de type capitaliste" telles que des "délits d'initiés", mais il est prêt à faire la leçon aux citoyens d'Allemagne, d'Espagne, d'Italie et de France qu'ils - en tant que pauvres travailleurs - doivent "  mordre la balle » et souffrir cet hiver dans un appartement froid, et peut-être aussi renoncer à un bain chaud, lorsque Vladimir Poutine ferme les robinets de Gasprom vers l'Europe en réponse aux politiques de sanctions de M. Biden.

 L'Europe devrait ignorer ces hypocrites.

DEMOCRAT “BIG TENT” MORPHS INTO A “PUP TENT”

 

Democrats once bragged of having the “Big Tent Party”, but today’s Democrats live in a “tent” which has shrunk into a tiny, crowded, unruly, sagging, leaky “pup tent” that only a select radical few can inhabit.

In an article in “The Guardian” (July 10, 2022) Mr Robert Reich (former Secretary of Labor )explains how this sad transformation occurred : “How did the Democrats lose the working class?” Within this piece he states the devastating truism that:  “Democrats have lost support with all working class voters across the electorate” ( Robert Reich July 10, 2022, The Guardian).  

How did this happen?  Democrats were once the Big Tent Party which favored policies that supported the masses of working folks.  But they abandoned those voters. The Democrats under Clinton, Obama, and recently under Biden did this to themselves.  Mr. Reich reminds us that these Democrat leaders all committed or helped to commit the “six cardinal sins” against US workers, who finally stopped voting Democrat.  Since President Bill Clinton, Democrat administrations hurt workers by: enacting the job killing Free Trade agreement with China, deregulating Wall Street, undermined unions, ignored antitrust laws, shunned public funding of elections, and quietly accepted the SCOTUS ruling on Citizen’s United. Then too, both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (and later Biden) hypocritically favored and encouraged cash and political donations from mega corporations, whom they quietly and surreptitiously supported.   

According to Mr Reich, the Democrat party, under Clinton and Obama,  committed all six of these sins against the working class voters. In effect, abandoning these voters so as to take advantage of massive financial support from  lobbyists and international companies and corporate donors. (Too often this largess also served as a means to enrich themselves and their families. They all left office as—or soon to be—multi-millionaires! )   

According to Robert Reich, the Biden Democrats today continue to ignore millions of working class voters, and instead “prioritize the support of suburban swing voters.”  Or so states Mr Reich.  Really “suburban swing voters” ?  I think not!  

Mr Reich, one of the few honest and well-intentioned Democrats, does accurately reveal in his Guardian piece, the verified sordid history of the Democrat Party’s abandonment of these long time, loyal, and steadfast working class voters.  But he fails to tell the truth, regarding the new clients this former “centrist” and “big tent” Democrat Party  had to prioritize and seek political support from to make Democrat election to office a possibility.    

In fact, since abandoning the Big Tent and working class,  Democrats have had a hard time winning.  After casting the working class voters out into the cold, Democrats  were forced to cobble together support for votes among small, diverse blocks of far-out, fringe, minority voters that under rare  circumstances (such as a once a century, deadly pandemic)  actually won them elective office, but with only hair-thin margins.  

The Democrat “clients” today are not the average, tax-paying,  hard-working, blue collar, Joe and Jane, of yore, but a melange of the very few, the disgruntled and the disenchanted.  Who are these fringe voters,  the Democrats have invited into their  skimpy “tent” ?  They are the “unhappy with America” black voters;  “affirmative action” voters; supporters of “reverse racist” polices such as race-based “equity of outcome supporters”; elements of the dysphoric, gender and sexual-orientation minorities; the LBGTQ “community”; radical feminists;  pro-abortion “up-to-birth-radicals; relaxed criminal justice proponents; those who oppose robust, pro-active police forces; those who support open borders and weak immigration laws; environmental fanatics  who propose immediate abandonment of all fossil fuels; anti-capitalist radicals, socialists, and most importantly as donors: the “progressive” urban wealthy elites.

Why Democrats are struggling today is apparent to all.  It is not the loss of “swing voters” as Mr. Reich claims . Most Americans and those, citizens who work for others, and who once supported Democrats, (swing voters too) simply, resent, or no longer support the radical “prioritized”  groups that modern liberal, far-left-leaning Biden-Democrats curry favor with today.”

The wheels have fallen off the Biden Administration (at >39% approval) because their polices are so un-American, so focused on minority, gender, race, issues, and are so unpopular.  This far-out party, that governs to support only its own tiny minority of the electorate deserves to be roundly defeated in the coming election. They are the radicals, the American voter is not.           

BIDEN’S STEALTH SUPPORT OF THE “LIBERAL WORLD ORDER”

July 2, 2020

If you are wondering why we are all suffering though the worst two years in this millennium, young  Brian Deese (Director of Biden’s National Economic Council) may have revealed just why we are all faced with news of daily horrors such as: soaring prices for food, gasoline, housing and transportation; inflation at 8.6% and rising;  shortages of basic products like baby formular, tampons and computer chips; supply chain problems; defunded police departments, fear of rampaging street mobs; turn-style justice (where police arrest, and liberal AGs return violent criminals right back into the street; our southern border intentionally left open for millions of illegal immigrants, human traffickers and drug dealers; abject distrust of government agencies wallowing in political partisanship; massive government overspending; huge government deficits; government debt more than annual GDP, high interest rates, a looming recession, a hot war in Central Europe, a renewed Russian Cold War, fear of nuclear holocaust; and as one might expect: a generalized sense of depression, fear and “malaise” pervades the public.  What was Brian Deese’s revealtion? Just that the reasons for these many Biden plagues facing American citizens in 2022 is that he and Joe Biden support what he termed the “Liberal World Order”.   

A day ago, a CNN reporter questioned Director Brian Deese regarding how long US gasoline prices would stay at the $5 dollar level?  Deese, the overeducated, inexperienced, 44 year-old (not old enough to experience 4 decade high inflation) who serves as Biden’s National Economic Council Director explained that our support for the liberal world order is the cause. Deese elaborated: “this (the gas prices) are about the future of the liberal world order, and we must stand firm”.  So high gas prices, high inflation and all the damaging progressive polices instituted by the radical leftist Biden team are what we all must pay, so that he and Joe can claim their “socialist virtue awards” as supporters of the “liberal world order”. The disastrous policies caused by this  policy have caused the price of a barrel of petroleum to jump up to $115 dollars per bbl  (up from $40 dollars during the past administration). That price jump was caused by our President’s “oh-so-virtuous” support of the “liberal world order”.  

But who of us ever even heard of the of the “liberal world order”?  Was this a stealth campaign political plot of the far left?  No one ever mentioned “liberal world order” during the recent 2020 election.  And who would have voted for such policies?  No one….certainly, no one in their right mind, would support a radical policy which in less than two years has generated: —a disaster in Afghanistan, a deadly war, a shrinking dollar, unimagined high prices, soaring crime rates, economic disaster,  open borders, drug traffickers, a new Cold War and looming recession?