By Denny Gulino
THE WHITE HOUSE (MaceNews) – When the Dow industrials can close down Wednesday almost 500 points and that only erases a month’s worth of gains, how bad can that be?
And to continue the Panglossian view of the day’s markets and tangled political recriminations, what’s not to like about those walls of worry? They keep the economy from running away with excessive exuberance, asset bubbles and unfettered spending.
And what a civics course to give schoolchildren, their teachers, their elected representatives at the local and state level and even members of Congress. Those enemies of democracy, apathy and complacency, are now on the run.
Of course what’s left might be fear and the trembling feeling that chaos is right around the corner. Net net, is that so awful? The electorate is on alert and the coming presidential election is guaranteed to have a heavy turnout, a plus for democracy.
How about Lennar, the homebuilder that has the most revenue and that was in the tank last year. Its shares rose 3.9%, to $58, on a surge of new business in the middle of all those losses elsewhere. As recently as December those shares were at $38. If homebuilders can bounce back, can a housing-led rebound be far behind?
Actually yes, that rebound can be far behind, if jobs growth starts to erode. Was the day’s ADP/Moody’s Analytics estimate of September private payrolls growth, at 135,000, really that kind of doomsday signal that prefigures a jobs recession? Even if it surprises by turning out to be accurate?
The ADP report nevertheless spread a blanket of gloom two days before the Bureau of Labor Statistics either comes out with a bigger blanket or spreads rays of sunshine. Or neither.
Now, about the politics. Yes, Bernie Sanders got a couple of stents. And yes, for those who think Elizabeth Warren would be the end of capitalism as we know it, that was another knock to optimism.
Does it seem like we’re avoiding the appointed mission of watching the White House? Perhaps that would be overkill on a day that spawned thousands of tweets, in addition to the 11 Trump wrote by sundown.
The twitter handles, like “TrumpMeltdown” and others get across the idea that it was another news conference for the books, if the books are about the sad spectacle of a growing political crisis, a president whose anger at his tormenters on Capitol Hill is off the charts, of inquisitors with subpoena power who cannot be stopped.
At least they can’t be stopped in any scenario short of an impasse that challenges the constitutional foundation of the separation of powers.
Aside from all that, which is getting adequate coverage elsewhere – and which was depicted minute by minute at @macenewsmacro,- there was something Trump said in his news conference with Finland President Sauli Niinisto that caught the ear, before the bitterness and accusations overwhelmed it.
“As you know there are other people coming into the Arctic and we don’t like it,” Trump said, departing from his Teleprompter script, after saying he and Niinisto agreed the northern reaches should be free of “intrusion, interference and coercion.” Trump added, perhaps foreshadowing crises of the future, “We can’t’ let it happen. We won’t let it happen.”
Finally, for anyone wonkishly fixated on the economy, there was a set of factoids released by the Census Bureau Wednesday that seemed to open a door to the essentials of prosperity – which depends on productivity.
The entire report is worth reading for all its insights. One line in particular stood out, that among American manufacturing plants, some are huge winners, able to “generate approximately 150% more real revenue per hour than less productive plants.”
It turns out how that happens is a lot less mysterious than it’s often described to be.
The report, “What Drives Productivity Growth,” can be read at: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/10/what-drives-productivity-growth.html?utm_campaign=20191002msacos1ccstors&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery.
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Reach this reporter at denny@macenews.com