David Stockman’s Contra Corner

Q1 Estimate:

But has anyone in Washington actually cut spending? Yes, and not surprisingly they are all Republicans. Sadly, there’s only seven of them: Sens. Rand Paul R-Ky. and Mike Lee R-Utah, and Reps. Justin Amash R-Mich., Thomas Massie, R-Ky., John Duncan Jr. R-Tenn., Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, and Morgan Griffith, R-Va....

This sounds very similar to today’s proposed solution of putting particles in the atmosphere to deflect he sunlight to reduce global warming. Indeed, TIME magazine's January 31, 1977, cover featured the cover story, “The Big Freeze.” They reported that scientists were predicting that Earth’s average temperature could drop by 20 degrees fahrenheit. Their cited cause was, of...

The cause of the recession of 2019-21 is exhaustion: exhaustion of the pell-mell expansion of credit (i.e. credit exhaustion/saturation), exhaustion in the household and small business sectors as real-world price increases continue exceeding wage and revenue gains, exhaustion of margin expansion in stocks, and exhaustion of Corporate America's policy of masking inflation by...

Today, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported that its purchase mortgage index – which tracks applications (not approvals) for conventional and government mortgages to purchase a single-family house – fell 6% from the prior week and was down 5% from the same week last year – despite falling mortgage rates, which should have cranked up home buying and mortgage activity....

The issue with a statement of “there is no recession in sight,” is that it is based on the “best guesses” about the economy currently. However, economic data is subject to substantive negative revisions in the future as actual data is collected and adjusted over the next 12-months and 3-years. Consider for a minute that in January 2008 Chairman Bernanke stated: “The Federal...

......... the biggest drop in the control group since the 9/11 attacks in 2001!...