Stockman’s Corner

If there was any doubt that Jay Powell is a cowardly empty suit, this chart tells you all you need to know. The man is so fearful that the Wall Street bully boys (and girls and robo-machines) might squint at him cross-eyed that he emitted nary a syllable that could incur their displeasure in today’s meeting […]

When you import $191 billion of autos and $188 billion of them (98.4%) come from NAFTA, the EU-27, Japan and South Korea, as we demonstrated in Part 1, it’s utterly impossible to say there is a national security threat in the auto sector per section 232. If there is, Armegeddon is already happening.

You have to wonder how long so-called conservatives can hold on to the vaporous canard that the Donald’s Trade Wars are some big exercise in Art of the Deal. That is, that Trump’s madcap tariff and trade bombs are actually all strategically designed to make MAGA , albeit via the rough and tumble extraction of concessions from abroad, which will allegedly fuel bigger trade

In the present era of 24/7 “breaking news”, the journalistic information intermediated by the internet and the cable networks has largely been reduced to noise, devoid of signal. Or at least any historical context beyond the here and now.

Well, that was timely. The US Treasury just posted a record $207 billion deficit for May and record monthly spending of $440 billion. That brought the rolling 12 month deficit to just shy of the trillion dollar mark at $986 billion.

After having apparently regained his pulse, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was back on bubblevision this AM throwing cold water on any trade deal breakthrough with China at the upcoming G-20 meeting. Said he:

There is nothing wrong with being part of the flock—that is, if the shepherd knows what he is doing.

Zero Hedge got that right. It described the latest melt-up spasm in the casino as the Nike Market—just buy it!

It wasn’t just the punk 75,000 new jobs number posted for May that rang the bell. More importantly, there was a 75,000 downward revision to the prior two months. That means that the 151,095,000 payroll jobs originally reported for April are still, well, 150,095,000 for May.

The good folk at Global Macro Monitor hit the nail on the head with the chart below. It actually rebukes the entire regime of Keynesian central banking.