The Friday File: An Italian artist just had an immaterial sculpture, an artwork of literally nothing, auctioned for $18,300. In February, the same artist exhibited another immaterial sculpture in Milan demarcated by a square of tape on a walkway. Since,…
China’s 2020 population hit 1.41 billion. While up slightly from 1.34 billion in 2010, it has peaked and will now start falling. China’s working age population has been declining since 2011. The percentage of the population over 60 has risen…
In 1959, US household energy spending was 7.3% of after-tax income. It then steadily declined, and outside the 1973 and 1980 Arab oil shocks when it peaked at 9.5%, it bottomed at 4% in 2002. At the height of the…
Inflation, as measured by the CPI, is up 4.2% Y-o-Y. However, a year ago Covid-19 had our economy reeling and the prices for things like oil and car rentals collapsing. To bypass the impacts of Sars-Cov-2 on prices, compare to…
Employers created 559,000 net new jobs in May, dropping the unemployment rate to 5.8%, its average rate since modern data collection began in 1948. From 1980-1999 the average was 6.5%, from 2000-2019 it was 5.9%. Prior to Sars-Cov-2 it was…
The Friday File: Since starting in 1996, Judy Sheindlin will have adjudicated roughly 12,750 cases when her last show airs on 6/8/21. Judge Judy has had the #1 first-run show in syndicated TV for 11 straight years, and is on…
Fed purchases of Treasuries drives down rates and drives up the price of financial assets like stocks/bonds and real assets like houses. If banks are reluctant to lend, as they currently are, the money the Fed pays the banks for…
To enhance diversity (and cope with Covid-19), many colleges no longer require SAT/ACT scores from applicants. Unfortunately, admission counselors must now rely more on other aspects of applications like essays, which also advantage the wealthy. Even extra-curricular activities are biased.…
In 1/20, prior to Covid-19, annualized US household spending on goods was $4.59 trillion/year. Last month, spending was a staggering $5.45 trillion, up 18.7%. Conversely, during 1/20, annualized spending on services totaled $10.29 trillion, it’s now at its post-pandemic high…
Originally known as Decoration Day, as Americans would decorate graves of Civil War soldiers and celebrated on 5/30, Memorial Day became an official national holiday, and its date was changed to the last Monday in May effective 1971. This year,…