Despite a very modest beat of expectations US worker productivity fell for the 2nd quarter in a row (down 1.0% vs 1.3% QoQ), the two-quarter-average output per hour isdown 1.4% - the worst slump since 1993. Unit labor costs rose by a better than expected 4.1% (helped by a downwardly revised 2.7% rise in Q4), the highest since Q4 2014.
America’s productivity slump is the biggest in nearly a quarter century...
A new study has shown that the aerial spraying of pesticides used to kill mosquitoes has caused an increase in autism amongst children in America. According to a study presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies, the use of pesticides to combat mosquito borne illnesses such as the Zika virus, has actually caused birth defects amongst the population. Scientists observed a 25 percent increase in autism and developmental disorders in children who lived in areas where aerial spraying for mosquitoes has been used since 2003.
So … are we having fun yet?
I’ve been eating jambalaya and drinking with old friends visiting from the Netherlands tonight. We spoke of Ignatius J. Reilly. My No. 1 Son came to the table at some point and told us that Ted Cruz had dropped out of the race, and that the Republican Party belonged to Donald Trump.
We all looked at each other as if Mama June from Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo had walked over to the table and squeezed out a massive fart.
After Indiana, American politics have entered a new period.
For eight months, Donald Trump’s electoral strength has astounded, shocked, and dismayed the political class and terrified the inner circles of the GOP. The outer-borough New Yorker, pushy WASP (Russell Baker’s phrase of some thirty years ago), developer and TV star with flamboyant personality, bold and bombastic, a militant centrist, an Eisenhower Republican with a Berlusconi temperament, has managed to carry out what amounts to a hostile takeover of the Republican Party, or at least its presidential process.
You may be all too familiar with those exhausting political-tagging debates involving this politician or that intellectual—and whether he or she is “really” a conservative (or a “real conservative”), a liberal, a libertarian, or a classical liberal. Or perhaps we should add a “paleo” or a “neo” to the label.