Personal Economics 101

A new study by two scholars at the University of North Carolina and a professor at Texas A&M examined the impact of DEI programs in corporate America and found no evidence that these programs lead to higher returns. The study reported: “The business case for diversity” is the dominant rhetorical paradigm for how U.S. corporations debate actions and policies around racial/ethnic diversity. In this paper, we conduct an empirical test of the paradigm by gathering data on the race/ethnicity of the individuals shown on the leadership pages of S&P 500 firms’ websites as of mid-2011, 2014, 2017, 2020 and 2021, and then determining if any of nine measures of the racial/ethnic diversity of these executives reliably predict…their firms’ financial performance over the next fiscal year. We do not find reliable evidence that they do. As such, our results do not support the “business case for diversity” when the claim is assessed using 1-year-ahead financial performance metrics and multiple ...

from Gary D. Halbert's "Between the Lines " President Joe Biden officially kicked off his 2024 re-election campaign in August, and he has been crisscrossing the country with campaign stops since then. His main re-election pitch is that the US economy is surging as a result of his economic policies. On that subject, the president repeatedly touts that the US economy has added almost  13.5 million new jobs  since he took office in January 2021. If true, that would be more jobs than created by any previous president over four years. The question is:  Is it true?  The answer is a little complicated but I’ll sort it out for you below. The fact is, nearly 13.5 million jobs have been gained since Mr. Biden took office. But what is critical to realize is that the vast majority of those new jobs were simply  businesses which shut down during Covid and are now reopening  – and calling back their laid-off workers. The issue when it comes to President Biden claiming he...

Note: As of 9 AM, GM is up .58 or 1.72% to $34.24, while Ford is up .10 or .7% to $12.72.  Sometimes I side with the unions, but mostly I don't. In this case, the UAW has asked for too much, in my opinion. Democrats talk about greedy companies all the time, but ignore greedy workers.  Full-time assembly plant workers at Ford and GM earn $32.32 an hour, while part-timers currently make about $17 an hour. Full-time employees at Stellantis earn $31.77 an hour, and part-time workers earn close to $16 an hour. The $32 an hour translates to approximately $67,000 annually, based on a 40-hour work week. According to the U.S. BLS, the median wage in 2022 was $54,132. So the plant workers are already making above-average pay, some 25% more. They want that $32 an hour to go up some 40 percent over four years, or to about $45 an hour. This equates to $94,000 a year, based on a 40-hour work week. The strike will initially target one plant at each of the Big Three automakers and will not in...

From the Daily Signal By Patrick Tyrrell & Anthony Kim If common sense and reports from thousands of employers weren’t enough, a recent National Bureau of Economic Research  paper  found conclusively that paying people not to work during the COVID-19 pandemic was why many of them remained unemployed. That  shouldn’t  come as a surprise to anyone, except that last year, major news reports were saying the opposite was true, before the evidence was in. Leave it to the American media to get something important wrong. By comparing states that discontinued the overly generous unemployment benefit programs early against those who retained the payouts for the life of the program, the National Bureau of Economic Research researchers showed: [I]n states that eliminated [the two pandemic-related expanded unemployment benefits programs] in June 2021, the share of 25-to-54-year-old unemployed workers who found employment rose by about 14.4 percentage points in July and August...

Treasuries are mixed after seeing some pressure yesterday as the Federal Reserve expectedly announced that it will speed up the tapering of its monthly asset purchases. The yield on the 2-year note is declining 6 basis points to 0.61%, and the yield on the 10-year note is decreasing 3 bps to 1.43%, while the 30-year bond rate is ticking 1 basis point higher to 1.87%. Many stocks are up today as well.  Why? First of all, the market loves certainty. Knowing what to expect on the macroeconomic level next year goes a long way for investors that are closely watching their portfolios, as well as an assurance from the Fed that it is taking inflation seriously. Powell also balanced his rates outlook with a strong dose of optimism about demand and income, and confirmed that "we're making rapid progress toward maximum employment." Weekly initial jobless claims came in at a level of 206,000 for the week ended December 11, versus the Bloomberg consensus estimate of 200,000 and compar...

Buried in the Budget Reconciliation Is the End of Right-to-Work, Independent Contractors; Climate Change Among the various major provisions of the PRO Act is effective nationalization of California's AB5 law that passed in 2019. This law makes hiring independent contractors much more difficult and specifies that contractors must be reclassified by businesses that hire them as employees, unless they meet specific and rigorous standards allowing them to stay independent. Read full article... Biden on Energy Crisis: Begging Others to Save Him From Himself It is on the costs of energy where Biden’s failures are most starkly visible. On his very first day in office, Biden scrapped the Keystone XL pipeline, killing 11,000 jobs in the process and making good on his campaign promise to be hostile to the fossil fuel industry. Continuing his assault on natural resource development, Biden suspended oil and natural gas leases in Alaska. Former President Donald Trump had propelled America to en...

Stocks and U.S. Treasurys fell Friday after a weak jobs report added to speculation about the Federal Reserve's plan to taper its bond-buying program. September was the slowest month for job growth this year, with just 194,000 jobs added compared to consensus estimates for a half-million, signaling a slowing of the labor market recovery and perhaps complicating the Fed's decision on when to begin scaling back monetary support. Inflation concerns pushed long-term interest rates higher, with the benchmark 10-year yield rising to 1.61% after adding 15 basis points on the week. But the three major stock market indexes finished modestly higher for the week, recovering from steep early losses after the U.S. Senate agreed to raise the debt ceiling for at least a few more weeks. The unemployment rate fell, but so did the important labor force participation rate, which has remained within a narrow range of 61.4 percent to 61.7 percent since June 2020. And the number of people who are no...

By the Tax Foundation   Last week, a disappointing jobs report came out: only 235,000 jobs were added when closer to 720,000 were expected. President Biden blamed the Delta variant, but that is not the whole explanation. While the Delta variant is a contributor, it is likely companies are also unsure of what the future holds for them as the Biden administration’s international tax plan and the Wyden proposal are debated in Congress, so they’re putting hiring, expansion, and investments on hold. Vice President of Global Projects Daniel Bunn says, “The tax reform in 2017 was helpful in reversing the pressure that U.S. companies felt to shield profits from U.S. taxes. However, if the tax code changes in line with what President Biden has proposed, those incentives for investing in the U.S. would go away, and companies would again feel the pressure to offshore profits and potentially jobs and investment. “You can combat profit shifting by making your country’s tax code more attractiv...