18.8.15

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Congratulations! Chicago Just Leapfrogged 4 Cities to America's Highest Sales Tax rate; Graft Chicago Style

Posted: 18 Aug 2015 05:32 PM PDT

Listen to the chants from Chicago: We're Number 1! We're Number 1! We're Number 1!

Chicago just leapfrogged past several other cities with the passage of a Cook County sales tax hike of one percentage point to 10.25%.

With that hike, Chicago Now has America's Highest Sales Tax.
Chicago has long had a steep sales tax, but a vote by Cook County commissioners Wednesday night made the city's rate the highest of any major city in the nation.

The commissioners approved a 1% hike, which bumped the sales tax rate in Cook County—where Chicago is located—from 9.25% to 10.25%. The increase passed with the minimum number of votes needed and is aimed at helping bail out the pension system for county workers.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who advocated for the hike, said the increase would generate an estimated $474 million more in sales tax per year and is necessary to ward off the "pension tsunami" that's closing in on the county. The retirement fund has a shortfall of $6.5 billion—a figure that's growing by $360 million per year.
Congratulations!

Congratulations are in order. Only one city can be number one. And Chicago is now on the top of the heap. Unions are cheering.

Unfortunately, everyone else suffers. Private taxpayers and businesses (those unable or unwilling to move) have to pay the price.

Tax Collection

I am not sure how the county came up with an "estimated $474 million more in sales tax per year" but if they added 1% to current tax collection, I propose they will not come close.

  • People will shop outside the county
  • People will move
  • Businesses will move
  • Recession is coming

Get Me the Hell Out of Here


I am currently planning my own escape from this madness.

Pension Tsunami

If the Cook County commissioners think they can stop a pension tsunami with tax hikes they are out of their minds.


Graft Chicago Style

The honest thing to do would be to admit promises made cannot possibly be kept.

But honesty and politicians (especially Chicago politicians) mix like oil and water. After all, those commissioners have their own massive pensions to protect.

Cook County Board president Toni Preckwinkle makes $170,000 a Year.

She is not worth a dime.

The pension tsunami that Preckwinkle is desperate to stop, is her own.

Graft Cake

For icing on the graft cake (another "We're Number 1!" Chicago category), right after boosting the sales tax, Crain's Chicago Business reported Preckwinkle Seeks $130 Million in Pay Hikes.

Got that?

In spite of the pension tsunami, Preckwinkle wants to give 27% of the tax hike to county workers.

Get Out

In passing that tax hike, Cook County commissioners gave a big ****you to Illinois taxpayers.

Is it any wonder businesses and taxpayers say Get Me the Hell Out of Here?

In case you missed it, please see Mish with Max Keiser in Chicago, Discussing Chicago Economics and Pizza.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Motor Vehicles, Housing Starts Boost GDPNow 3rd Quarter Forecast to Anemic 1.3 Percent

Posted: 18 Aug 2015 10:16 AM PDT

A 15% boost in motor vehicle assemblies added 0.5 percentage points to the Atlanta Fed GDPNow Forecast for 3rd quarter GDP.
The GDPNow model forecast for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the third quarter of 2015 is 1.3 percent on August 18, up from 0.7 percent on August 13. The forecast for real GDP growth increased from 0.7 percent to 1.2 percent after Friday's industrial production release from the Federal Reserve. Most of this increase was due to a 15.3 percent increase in seasonally adjusted motor vehicle assemblies in July that boosted the forecast of the contribution of real inventory investment to third-quarter GDP growth from -2.2 percentage points to -1.8 percentage points.
GDPNow Evolution



GDPNow vs. Blue Chip Forecasters



Motor vehicles added 0.5 percentage points to the forecast and today's housing starts numbers added another 0.1 percentage points to the forecast on August 13.

First quarter GDP came in at 0.6%, second quarter at 2.3%, and the 3rd quarter estimate is 1.3%. GDP growth averages just about 1% annually for three quarters.

Not once in history has the Fed hiked with such anemic growth. 

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Mish Moving From Blogger to WordPress

Posted: 18 Aug 2015 09:47 AM PDT

I have made a decision to move from Blogger to WordPress. I expect the move to be complete within a few weeks.

I have many reasons for the switch but at the top of the list are layout issues and changes that I want to make that are simply impossible in blogger.

In addition, some things work clumsily on Blogger, and other things are broken for reasons unknown.

Search Button Not Working

In a June timeframe, the search button on the upper right of this blog stopped working for me and for some others. It worked perfectly for years.

All many see is ads. Others get "404" errors. It works just fine for still others.

Google cannot replicate the problem.

I added a Search widget at the bottom of the page that does work. It looks sloppy but it works.

If you are looking for something on my blog and the top search button does not work, try the bottom search.

Disqus Comments

People keep asking me when I am going to bring comments back. Actually they have been back for some time.

Echo/JSkit went out of business and it took me a couple weeks to get the Disqus comment system going. However, Disqus only loads on an individual post. It does not load on the base blog, http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/.

You can see and enter comments right now if you click on an item in the "recent post list" (presuming it displays), and that has sometimes not worked properly either.

WordPress Comments

I will use the built-in commenting system of WordPress.

Subscribe Feed

Many people tell me they have subscribed to my blog but do not get the feed. This is another problem Google cannot replicate or find. And this problem has been going on for over a year.

The problem may very well be in my blog somehow, or in FeedBurner, although it worked fine for years.

Regardless, WordPress has many built-in features that allow reader subscription. I will go with one of the WordPress built-in options.

Lack of Blogger Resources

It is nearly impossible to find reliable sources that can work with and fix Blogger problems. Support will be far easier with a WordPress layout.

Sincere Thanks to Google!

It's been a wonderful relationship with Google actually. I cannot expect such a large global company drop everything they are doing to investigate problems for single blogger.

Instead, I will move to a platform where technical help is more readily available.

That platform is WordPress.

Final Thoughts

I have some top-notch assistance at WordPress now, helping me with the transition.

My new site will be more navigable and it will have far fewer ads as well as fewer irritating ad characteristics.

The main area of the page will also be larger.

Thanks for your patience and also thanks to Google for getting me started blogging.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Survival of the Fittest Robot: A Mother Robot and the Evolution of Her Offspring

Posted: 17 Aug 2015 11:55 PM PDT

You might not toss your kids on the ash heap but a "mother robot" trained to evaluate the progress of her child bots will do just that.

Please consider This Robot Uses the Power of Evolution to Produce and Improve New Robots.
Roboticists have developed a "mother" robot that can build and evaluate her own "children," and then decide which version performs best to inform the design of the next generation. Remarkably, the system doesn't require any human intervention.

Here's how the system works: A so-called "mother" robot is programmed to build a "child" robot that's capable of rudimentary locomotion. This child can consist of anywhere from one to five plastic cubes, each with a small motor inside. Then, without any human intervention or computer simulation, the mother robot evaluates the quality of her offspring according to a speed test, and then uses that information to inform the design of next generation of progeny. It's survival of the fittest, but applied to robots.

"Natural selection is basically reproduction, assessment, reproduction, assessment and so on," noted lead researcher Fumiya Iida in a statement. "That's essentially what this robot is doing—we can actually watch the improvement and diversification of the species."

In five separate experiments, the mother designed, constructed, and evaluated ten agents over ten generations (for a total of 100 candidates). Each experiment typically began with a randomly generated child-bot. As the experiment progressed, the mother robot mutated her offspring by manipulating the physical configurations of the five blocks, which in this case can be construed as the robotic equivalent of genes.

By the time the mother robot got to the last generation, her spawn performed a speed task twice as quickly as the best individuals in the first generation. What's more, her ability to improve performance increased over time. The researchers say this was on account of the robot's ability to fine-tune design parameters during later generations.

Fascinatingly, the researchers say some designs weren't likely to have been conceived by a human; it was truly doing it's own thing.
The science is complex. You can read the original study at Morphological Evolution of Physical Robots through Model-Free Phenotype Development.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.
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