Bob Byrne

Another Broken Window

June 8, 2023 It’s called the Fallacy of the Broken Window. It was first put forth by a 19th century economist named Fredric Bastiat.  The main thesis of his argument was that going to war and blowing stuff up doesn’t create economic growth.  Here’s the gist…  A young boy breaks a business owner’s shop window. …

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Show’s Over!

June 6, 2023 It was a real nail biter…  Came right down to the wire…  An eleventh hour save… There’s another saying that I’m sure is hanging as a motivational poster in the Congress cafeteria somewhere… Throw out whatever cliches you want but… Disaster averted. In a battle that was marked out since the beginning …

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Big Oil Pushes Back

May 26, 2023 There’s no denying that things have gotten weird where the culture landscape goes. This is a financial letter so I try to stick to topics of that nature. I don’t judge people’s personal beliefs. And I don’t want to make this about social issues per se…  but the overlap between finance and …

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“Zombie Consumers” Are Clinging to Life (and Prepping for the Worst…)

May 19, 2023 Have consumers finally gone full walking dead? Last December I wrote about the rise of “zombie consumers” in today’s economy. How shrinking personal savings — thanks to depleted stimulus windfalls, falling real wages and “still-not-transitory” inflation — was impacting both consumers and threatening the economy as a whole. Given certain recent reports, I …

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Employment Games

May 16, 2023 Winning! Jay Powell likes to keep talking about that when he’s trying to explain that the economy isn’t headed for the big belly landing. Here’s what he said in his latest FOMC statement: The labor market remains very tight. Over the first three months of the year, job gains averaged 345 thousand …

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