PCE rose at an annualized rate of 4.1% last month.
Back out the hikes in energy and food, and you've still got a rate of increase that's a point-and-a-half over what the Fed knows it has to be to keep the whole thing from getting crazy and blowing up.
I'm not much for opera - especially the sopranos - but Sabine Devieilhe always does it just right for me. The way she rounds everything out with that perfected vibrato - nothing sounds harsh or forced - it's all just warm and sweet.
And like anyone else who's really good at what they do, she works really hard to make it sound easy.
Here's her cover of Handel's Cleopatra aria, Se Pietà Di Me Non Senti.
Thinking takes time, and creates the kind of friction that gets in the way of realizing the goals of the TechBro Plutocrats, because that friction makes it a little harder for them to churn through the enormous volume of little things that large scale operations have to have in order to turn the big profits their business model demands.
IMO, "move fast and break things" grew out of the combination of lightning fast computing times and poor salesmanship:
You have only a couple of paths to reaching your revenue goal.
Get a few people to spend big money on your goods and services
Get lots of people to spend a little money on your goods and services
Walmart offers lots of stuff at a low price, and they don't have to worry about treating every customer well because the pool of prospective customers is so vast. For every disgruntled shopper, there are 10 or 20 who are willing to put up with Walmart's lack of service in order to get out of the store quickly, thinking they've paid relatively little.
Weirdly - or maybe not so weirdly - the instant gratification of low price is what makes it all so expensive in the long term, because of considerations other than just the money we spend in the store.
Anyway - thinking - how is it done, and what is it good for?
What we're losing is the ability to sit with your problem long enough for your own answer to show up.
MAGA loves to bitch about how racism in America started with Obama.
And they're consistently giving us a perfect view of point #8 from Umberto Eco's Eternal Fascism - ie: Obama was dumb and inept, and systematically destroying the country.
The day Obama took office, the Dow closed at 7,949 points. Eight years later, the Dow had almost tripled.
General Motors and Chrysler were on the brink of bankruptcy, with Ford not far behind, and their failure, along with their supply chains, would have meant the loss of millions of jobs. Obama pushed through a controversial, $80 billion bailout to save the car industry. The U.S. car industry survived, started making money again, and the entire $80 billion was paid back, with interest.
While we remain vulnerable to lone-wolf attacks, no foreign terrorist organization has successfully executed a mass attack here since 9/11.
Obama ordered the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.
He drew down the number of troops from 180,000 in Iraq and Afghanistan to just 15,000, and increased funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
He launched a program called Opening Doors which, since 2010, has led to a 47 percent decline in the number of homeless veterans. He set a record 73 straight months of private-sector job growth.
Due to Obama’s regulatory policies, greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 12%, production of renewable energy more than doubled, and our dependence on foreign oil was cut in half.
He signed The Lilly Ledbetter Act, making it easier for women to sue employers for unequal pay.
His Omnibus Public Lands Management Act designated more than 2 million acres as wilderness, creating thousands of miles of trails and protecting over 1,000 miles of rivers.
He reduced the federal deficit from 9.8 percent of GDP in 2009 to 3.2 percent in 2016.
For all the inadequacies of the Affordable Care Act, we seem to have forgotten that, before the ACA, you could be denied coverage for a pre-existing condition and kids could not stay on their parents’ policies up to age 26.
Obama approved a $14.5 billion system to rebuild the levees in New Orleans.
All this, even as our own Mitch McConnell famously asserted that his singular mission would be to block anything President Obama tried to do.
While Obama failed on his campaign pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, that prison’s population decreased from 242 to around 50.
He expanded funding for embryonic stem cell research, supporting ground breaking advancement in areas like spinal injury treatment and cancer.
Credit card companies can no longer charge hidden fees or raise interest rates without advance notice.
Most years, Obama threw a 4th of July party for military families. He held babies, played games with children, served barbecue, and led the singing of “Happy Birthday” to his daughter Malia, who was born on July 4.
Welfare spending is down: for every 100 poor families, just 24 receive cash assistance, compared with 64 in 1996.
Obama comforted families and communities following more than a dozen mass shootings. After Sandy Hook, he said, “The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10 years old.”
Yet, he never came for your guns.
He sang Amazing Grace, spontaneously, at the altar.
He was the first president since Eisenhower to serve two terms without personal or political scandal.
The more things change, the more they stay fucked up - just maybe a little less than they were before.
The South is not a bad place filled with bad dumbass people. It's a good and decent place with many many good and decent people, but that's not to say there's a shortage of stupid racist assholes in the South.
And BTW - the South has no corner on the market when it comes to stupid racist assholes. Just sayin'.
