Month: November 2020

The Friday File: Based on NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope exoplanet data set and stellar data from the European Space Agency, astronomers estimate that of the 100 billion stars in our galaxy, four billion are sunlike. Assuming 7% of those have…

Before Covid-19, employment in foodservice and drinking places peaked at 12.3 million in 2/20. Employment bottomed in 4/20 at 6.3 million, slightly lower than the 5/91 post-dot-com level! There has since been a recovery, and employment is now 10.2 million,…

Veterans Day was first celebrated as Armistice Day on 11/11/19, the first anniversary of the end of WWI, and in 1938 it became an official holiday. In 1954, President Eisenhower changed the name to Veterans Day to honor all those…

With a stimulus bill to help small business, households and others probably not arriving until February, and its size likely to be relatively small, Covid-19 cases rising, and the spring 2020 stimulus wearing thin, the Fed is increasingly likely to…

638,000 net new jobs in October, a rise in the labor force participation rate from 61.4% to 61.7%, and a steep fall in the unemployment rate from 7.9% to 6.9% in the face of waning fiscal stimulus are excellent indicators.…

The Friday File: Since 1968, the Motion Picture Association of America has rated movies. Studios seek movie ratings because major theaters will generally not show unrated films. In 1984, the PG-13 rating began. Since then, very few G or (dreaded)…

Despite a lack of clarity about who the election winners will be, we can be certain that large fiscal stimulus is a loser. Market hopes of unified government leading to trillions in aid have been largely dashed as divided government…

This is the 59th US presidential election. The first and only one to be held in an odd numbered year saw George Washington defeat John Adams in 1789. Adams, Jefferson, and Madison followed. Those were candidates! The Adams’ were the…

Since 1860, a Republican has occupied the White House for 95 years, a Democrat 65. The annualized S&P 500 return during the 65 Democratic years of control was 8.4%, 8.3% when the President was a Republican, a statistically insignificant difference.…