KAVANAUGH

So Brett Kavanaugh is now on the Supreme Court.
Let's see, when it comes to sexual harassers put of the Supreme Court, There are two (Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh) and the score is:

                          Men                                       Women
                           2                                                  0

I have two lingering memories of the Kavanaugh nomination.

One is the anger showed by Sen. Lindsey Graham in which he threatened the Democrats to just wait until he becomes chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee

The other is the anger shown by Judge Brett Kavanaugh in his second round of hearings where he threatened what goes around comes around.  i.e. he will get the Democrats when he is on the Supreme Court. * His face dripped with sneering out-of-control anger.  And he read his statement so there is no misspeaking.  Of course, he was told to get more aggressive.  That is the Trump way, of course.

(click to enlarge)

(click to enlarge)

Curiously, Kavanagh is unqualified to be on the Supreme Court based on his own speeches.  Of particular note is one given titled “The Judge as Umpire”—at the Columbus Law School at Catholic University in 2015:
To be a good judge and a good umpire, it’s important to have the proper demeanor. Really important, I think. To walk in the others’ shoes, whether it be the other litigants, the litigants in the case, the other judges. To understand them. To keep our emotions in check. To be calm amidst the storm. On the bench, to put it in the vernacular, don’t be a jerk. I think that’s important. To be a good umpire and a good judge, don’t be a jerk. In your opinions, to demonstrate civility—I think that’s important as well. To show, to help display, that you are trying to make the decision impartially and dispassionately based on the law and not based on your emotions. That we’re not the bigger than the game…There’s a danger of arrogance, as for umpires and referees, but also for judges. And I would say that danger grows the more time you’re on the bench. As one of my colleagues puts it, you become more like yourself—and that can be a problem.**

I guess I am going to have to give up all hope that Lindsay Graham will evolve into another John McCain.  It seems up to Ben Sasse to take the roll if he wishes or, maybe,  Lisa Murkowski.

Dr. Ford's testimony as to events at least passes the preponderance of the evidence test: she mentioned the incident during a counseling appointment in 2012, she passed a lie detector test, she brought the Kavanaugh incident up with her representative before Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court!

Since Brett Kavanaugh says he still likes beer, I can only hope he has his alcoholism*** under control and that it lasts.  He could be what I call a functional alcoholic.

Also, I hope that at least a few times along the way while Judge Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court that he rules in favor of the people.  Certainly, in the case of the 17 yr old pregnant illegal-immigrant girl, he forgot his impartiality and tried to stall the girl's wish for an abortion until she was in the 20th week of pregnancy so she would be ineligible for an abortion in Texas.  Somehow, the girl got the court to rule on it and Kavanaugh was overruled.

I have the same wish for Neil Gorsuch.  Considering Gorsuch's ruling on the Hobby Lobby case prior to it's getting to the supreme court makes it unlikely.  In this ruling, it became legal for a business owner to dip into a law and on religious basis pick and choose what parts of the law the owner doesn't like and will not obey.  Please note that this case was not about abortion, but about contraceptives.  But one can hope.

* https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/09/27/brett-kavanaugh-defining-images-christine-ford-kavanaugh-hearing/1446178002/
** https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/10/kavanaugh-in-2015-a-judge-must-keep-emotions-in-check-and-not-be-a-political-partisan/
** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2018/09/sexual-attack.html

JOBS AND JOBLESS - SEPTEMBER 2018

The increase in employment was less than anticipated.
134,000: That was the total amount added to payrolls, according to the Labor Department. The number was well below Refinitiv estimates of 185,000 and the slowest pace since the 14,000 added in September 2017.*

3.7 percent: September's unemployment rate was down two-tenths of a point from August and was at the lowest level since December 1969, when the jobless level hit 3.5 percent.*

The drop in unemployment to 3.7% happened because of increases in the revised July and August hires of 87,000 job totals. The revised numbers can easily change by 40,000.  For this reason, I wish they would discontinue with the initial monthly estimate that is demonstrable uncertain.

Initial claims for unemployment benefits continue to be remarkably low.  In fact at record lows because of the increased size of the workforce over time.  Thus the number of weeks where the unemployment claims have been below 300,00 is a record on the basis of unemployment claims per 100,000 workers.
 Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 8,000 to a seasonally adjusted 207,000 for the week ended Sept. 29, the Labor Department said on Thursday.**

Data for the prior week was revised to show 1,000 more applications received than previously reported. Claims fell to 202,000 during the week ended Sept. 15, which was the lowest level since November 1969.**

The distribution of job gains and losses are given in the figure:***

(click on figure to enlarge)

If we really are at full employment, then why are so many people available to be employed?.  I suppose the answer is that it is estimated that about 150,000 new people enter the job market each month.

* https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/05/the-five-most-important-numbers-from-todays-jobs-report.html
** https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/04/us-weekly-jobless-claims-sept-29-2018.html
*** https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/05/heres-where-the-jobs-are--in-one-chart.html

AUTONOMOUS CARS

I don't know about others, but I find autonomous cars to be the most exciting thing going today.  This is why I am writing about them so much.    Here is some recent commentary.*

My daughter-in-law has a Honda that really is autonomous on the highway now so long as there is a center line.  It centers the vehicle between the lines.  It slows for slow moving vehicles.  It stops if the vehicle or person ahead of you stops.  She could get on a freeway now and just drive hands free.

It seems to me that cars are slowly becoming autonomous.

Other news is that Honda if becoming a partner in GM Cruise and will invest $750 million up front and more than $2 billion more for about 5% of Cruise over the next 12 years.

GM Cruise** and Google Waymo*** are considered the two most advanced companies.

They made some significant progress based on an impressive real-world self-driving demo of their Bolt EV prototype of which they now have over 100 driving in California, Arizona, and Michigan.

They are already using part of their fleet to carry Cruise employees “anywhere in San Francisco using their app” – an early version of the service they plan to offer to the public next year.**

* https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/10/03/former-gm-vice-chair-and-former-chrysler-president-on-the-autonomous-car-race-gm-honda-self-driving-car-vehicle-cruise-holdings-investment-stake-hmc.html
** https://electrek.co/2018/10/03/gm-cruise-honda-investment-new-autonomous-vehicle/
*** https://waymo.com/

SOLAR TILE SHINGLES

An exciting development from Elon Musk is solar shingles (tiles) for roofing.*  I have felt for many years that eventually, solar roofing would become a common roofing material but I didn't dream of solar tiles.  At this stage, it is very expensive to have your house reroofed with solar tiles (One man who did so paid $100,000! He did need to reroof his house anyway, and it has lowered his energy bills by about 90% in the summer.).

I don't know to what extent Elon Musk's recent psychological problems will have to do with this.

* https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/24/tesla-solar-roof-tiles-where-are-they.html
https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-solar-shingles
https://news.energysage.com/tesla-solar-roof-price-vs-solar-panels/

CONSUMER SENTIMENT AND CONFIDENCE IS HIGH

Only about a week ago, I published a piece in which I said that Consumer Sentiment was high.*  Now there is a report that another measurement by the Conference Board  - the Consumer Confidence Index is at its highest value since the year 2000 at 138.4.  The all-time high was 144.7 set in 2000.
"Consumers' assessment of current conditions remains extremely favorable, bolstered by a strong economy and robust job growth," said Lynn Franco, director of economic indicators at the Conference Board. "These historically high confidence levels should continue to support healthy consumer spending, and should be welcome news for retailers as they begin gearing up for the holiday season."**

An additional bit of good news is: The average FICO credit score hit an all-time high this year, reaching 704 and continuing an upward trend that began about a decade ago. Scores are increasing because more people are checking their credit and staying informed, and because of new standards for how negative information on your report is handled.***

The attitudes of business seem to be changing awfully fast in a positive direction.  I wondered before if we are entering a bubble phase of the stock market.  These recent reports only tend to confirm that feeling.****  If we are entering a bubble, we have yet to see the blowout phase.

Of course, not all the news is so good.  For example, new home construction is low and only slowly recovering. (https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgxvzKkmXRxcHQnNlBRPBLFLZZXvW)

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2018/09/government-debt-and-mixed-economic.html
** https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/25/consumer-confidence-september.html
*** https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/25/heres-how-credit-scores-compare-across-generations.html?forYou=true
**** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2018/09/is-boom-over.html

SEXUAL ATTACK

(Between the Kavanaugh matter and the NYT publishing a piece about Rod Rosenstein wearing a wire in the office of President Trump, political news is making me depressed so I am stopping to listen to TV news and avoiding political matters in newspapers.  Unavoidably, I do see something like Rosenstein is either quitting or being fired.  But until further notice, there will not be political articles on my blog after this piece.)

Humanity has never come up with a satisfactory solution to the accusations of sexual attacks.  So long as the man is willing to lie, and stick with it, he gets off Scot-free, unless there is some sort of other evidence (semen, etc.).

The problem is that there are false claims of sexual attacks so telling the difference is difficult.

In the latest 36-yr-old case, of Christine Blasey Ford against Brett Kavanaugh,  it seems to me that the preponderance of the evidence is on her side.  She has requested an FBI investigation.  She has identified a third person in the room.  Brett Kavanaugh says he never did such a thing and besides he was not at the party although we don't know what party, at whose home, and on what exact date it was held.  What is his proof?  Was he in the south of France that summer?  Also, you would think he would love an FBI investigation if he was certain it was not him.  But he definitely does not want the FBI messing in his high school career.

Certainly, Ms. Ford was much affected by the event but handled it in a mature matter by getting a Ph.D. in psychology, I'm sure in part to deal with her problem that she has never completely solved.

Now I'm willing to believe he does not remember the event and that the third person does not remember either.  The friend of Kavanaugh says he may have been blacked out (dead drunk), and Christine says they were both fall-down drunk.

Apparently, Kavanaugh has admitted to being in a 100 keg club, i.e. they were to drink 100 kegs of beer during their senior year.  In case you don't recall, kegs come in various sizes and contain from 53-55 to 5300 bottles of beer.  Let's accept that it was the smaller kegs of interest.  So 100 kegs would be 5,300 bottles of beer in a school year.  If the target was a school year of 43 wks, then Kavanaugh would have had to drink 123.25 bottles of beer every week or 17.89 bottles of beer every day, nearly 3 six-packs every day.  In other words, Kavanaugh was drinking alcoholically every day for a school year.  Even if what was meant was a calendar year, he still would have had to drink 14.56 bottle a day, every day of the year which is still very alcoholically.

Let's hope that he failed in his 100 keg target.  If not, one wonders how he was able to prepare for college?  If he was meeting his goal of 100 kegs, then let's hope he has become a recovering alcoholic.  He at least seems to be a functional alcoholic.  I'm sure he won't be the first supreme court Justice who is an alcoholic.

I'm sure that the Republican men feel that since there was no penetration, nothing happened so what is the big deal?  Besides, they feel it was 36 yrs ago when boys are struggling with runaway hormones.  So here we are.  I do not want to follow this situation any further.

IS THE BOOM OVER?

As I look at the behavior of the DJIA this last week (sometimes called the "DOW"), I get the feeling that we have entered a bubble phase of the stock markets.  When I look at the other indices, however, they are all down for the month or up just a little: the SandP 500 (up 1%), with the NASDAQ Composite, the NASDAQ 100, and the Russell 2000 all down.   Only the DJIA has increased ( up nearly 3% this month).

Certainly, a problem since the tax cut bill is that companies have wasted a lot of money on stock buybacks and probably in buying companies that they don't know how to run.

The latest leg of the bull market has been fueled by last year's tax cuts that also contributed to soaring corporate earnings along with a fresh round of share buybacks that is expected to eclipse $1 trillion this year. Buybacks have totaled $4.7 trillion since the crisis.*

I continue to think that we are good for the rest of this year,** but next year (2019) begins to look more and more iffy.  Just too much money was dumped on industry too fast.  At least they have been spending an increased amount on plant and equipment, as their hesitancy to do so has been the biggest drag on GDP.

* https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/19/the-great-bull-market-is-dead-and-heres-whats-next-bank-of-america-strategist-says.html
** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2018/07/economy-tariffs-and-stock-markets.html
http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2018/09/government-debt-and-mixed-economic.html