Saturday, March 06, 2021
On-The-Radio Advocating for More Pandemic "Pots of Money": It's John Giles in Seven Minutes + Forty Seconds
Yesterday on Friday afternoon Hizzoner John Giles, conservative Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona, took to the airwaves
on KJZZ Radio urging his same-party conservative Republicans in Congress to approve the $1.9-Trillion for more COVID-19 federal funds for states and cities now under deliberation in The Senate. He asked them 'to leave their partisan politics at the door."
Politically persuasive Giles is not - every conservative Arizona Republican in the House of Representatives cast their votes against the measure.
No need to worry in the U.S. Senate - both Arizona Senators are Democrats.
So what is Giles up to in this 07:40 on-air interview other than attempting to carve out a place and position himself for a potential seat in a new Congressional District created by a population increase in the fast-growing city of Mesa? He needs to answer the question Is Mesa a poorly-run city? . . . that's the same question Giles was asked last Saturday in a nation-wide CNN interview that he side-stepped and dodged by changing the inquiry to how the city administrated $134M in COVID Aid, Relief and Economic Security federal funds that had to be spent by last year ending December 30, 2020.
He mentions the city did a "Community Assessment" in March 2020 - a somewhat sketchy and quick 'assessment' (but he doesn't say that), that glosses over structural flaws and inbalances in the city budgets for years using increases in city-owned utilities sales-and-use taxes, fees, and charges to offset deficits.
Mesa has had an affordable housing crisis for years, does not even know how many businesses are located here - and can't say how many jobs were lost. . . and city officials were shocked to see 12,000 people in one day showing up in longstanding lanes for emergency food-boxes at the Mesa Convention Center -- but they did make sure to put into their coffers COVID-19 money to pay $52,000/month to themselves to rent the convention center. . and don't forget that the salaried long-time loyal city administrators - who got the 10% administrative feels on all those "Pots of Money" are going to rave about what they accomplished even if that's not the case!
About three minutes at the end is occupied by rambling talk about the change in City Code for the Anti-Discrimination Ordinance with Giles admitting it's more for economic reasons than what is right.
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Mesa Mayor John Giles Advocating For Aid To Cities, States In New COVID-19 Relief Bill
Published: Friday, March 5, 2021 - 1:05pm
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The U.S. Senate has started working on the nearly $2 trillion COVID-19 relief package that the House approved last week.
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The U.S. Senate has started working on the nearly $2 trillion COVID-19 relief package that the House approved last week.
Senators will have up to 20 hours to debate the 628-page bill. One of the provisions in it would provide money to states and cities, and Mesa Mayor John Giles says that aid is needed.
Mayor Giles has been lobbying for that money to be included. The Show spoke with him for more about it, and why this is such an important issue for him.
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Friday, March 05, 2021
Fed Chair Jay Powell, Buckle-Up. This gets Bumpy
Yesterday "a bumper jobs report" . . .OK is it time for a Twist?
Have a scoop of this first:
"It's been a rough week for traders. Real yields posted one of their biggest spikes in modern history and everyone's favorite investment vehicle (ARKK) entered a bear market. Momentum stocks are going belly-up and reopening trades are losing their mojo.
As far as Fed Chair Jay Powell's concerned, it's all a distraction. 
It... "caught my attention," Powell told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday. Like when you're walking down 5th Ave and there's a nice suit in a window display. No reason to stop — maybe you'll come back one day. Let me phrase it another way: Jay Powell isn't here to save your meme stocks. Here's here to chew bubblegum and get back to full employment.
And he's all out of bubblegum.
Everyone knows by now that Powell is not going to let inflation get in the way of achieving his goals.
What they apparently did not know was that Powell isn't going to let market volatility get in his way either — at least not yet.That is a big deal. For years, there's been a prominent narrative that the Federal Reserve is the guardian angel of the U.S. stock market. . .
Jay Powell Isn't Here To Save Your Stonks
More > . . .Anyone who tells you interest rates and quantitative easing have not played an enormous role in keeping stocks rallying for a decade-plus is off their rocker. Yes earnings also mostly climbed, yes there's been tons of tech innovation, this, that, sure. But bottom line: I've been asking investors for almost a decade why they're buying stocks and bonds and the foremost, most frequent answer is: the Fed.
This logic was never more obvious than in the past year, as a huge dose of monetary and fiscal support kept the party going and made everyone feel invincible — from day-trading Redditors YOLOing Tesla calls to serious, big-money institutional investors. And now, by no instruction from Chair Powell, they expect the Fed to ramp up the money-printer again. . .
Ridiculous. Because 10-year yields achieved a whopping 1.5% and the most expensive stock market in history barely hit a correction? Powell is right to let the froth come off.
Frankly, he's also partly at fault for the froth to begin with, after reversing rates at the first sign of volatility and amid pressure from President Trump at the end of 2018. Financial conditions were the loosest for a rate-cut in history and inflation rose, but yields went down. . .
What's done is done.
What matters right now is that Powell has one goal: to get the economy back to where it was before the pandemic, and rising rates are not going to stop him.
If you want to know when he'll care about the stock market, then you've got to figure out how low the market needs to go before tightening the economy. I don't know.
What I do believe is that the long-end of the bond market is going to run wild until some major economic downturn, a crash in the market, or yield-curve control.
"J-Pow" is right to play it cool right now, with stocks grossly overvalued by every measure, but I suspect we may see a change of tone if bond yields go the way I think they will — up, persistently. If the trend in yields keeps going, then the downtrend in expensive stocks will too, unless Powell decides it's derailing the economy.
Next we hear from him will be March 17, so buckle up: this part gets bumpy."
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------ Oliver Renick Follow him on Twitter.
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Re/Thinking Jobs: Impact & Consequences In The Uncertain Path Ahead
Hard to say for now if anyone is looking for any kind of bounce-back anytime soon - millions of people are not gainfully-employed, out-of-work, vulnerable and looking for more aid, relief and economic security. There's new data and new statistics all the time, but we appear to be in a holding pattern until there's a new game-plan to include everyone
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Workers are getting a really bad deal
This week's spate of data highlighted the difficulties Americans who have lost their jobs have had bouncing back from the coronavirus pandemic, and just how much those who have managed to keep their jobs have been working.
What's happening: The Labor Department reported Thursday that the productivity of American workers fell by a revised 4.2% annual rate in the fourth quarter, the largest decline in 39 years.
- The productivity decline was due to an increase in output by 5.5% that was accompanied by a 10.1% increase in hours worked.
- Unit labor costs and hourly compensation both increased, but largely because lower-wage workers have disproportionately been pushed out of the labor force, driving up the average.
What it means: Less people are working and those who are, are working more.
Between the lines: The increased work employees have done has been great for big companies, who have significantly cut back their workforce numbers over the past year.
- Companies with more than 1,000 total employees cut more than 5,000 jobs in February and reduced their labor headcount by 4.7 million jobs since February 2020, according to ADP's private payrolls data.
- Over the past three months, companies with 1,000-plus employees shed an average of 39,000 employees a month, while companies with 1–49 employees added an average of 26,500.
Why it matters: The pandemic has shifted the business landscape to one that strongly favors large companies over small ones, so we can likely expect more of this in the future.
The big picture: Big companies have been able to feast on record-low borrowing rates as the Fed's quantitative easing programs and implicit backstopping of the bond market have made it easy for just about any large company to raise money by issuing debt.
- Small companies without capital market access have seen much the opposite, as banks have tightened lending standards and pandemic-hit businesses have struggled to survive with minimal support from government programs like the Paycheck Protection Program.
Why you'll hear about this again: The Fed and chair Jerome Powell say they are keeping interest rates low and maintaining incredibly easy monetary policy as part of the effort to tighten the labor market and help Americans get back to work.
- But big companies have shown they aren't using the Fed's bounty to hire workers. They are hoarding money in cash reserves and investing in new technology designed to replace workers.
Of note: Thursday's initial jobless claims data showed that another 1.2 million Americans filed for first-time unemployment claims last week, and 18 million remained on unemployment insurance as of Feb. 13.
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