"Oh The Gift To Gee Us..." Interesting Article. Who Is Zelenskyy. Several Wise Answers.

And most of you guilt ridden idiots believed this fraud. He lulled you into his cage and then took your head off with what he always told and wrote he was going to do:

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Life could not be better. Spent a week with dear neighborhood friends from Atlanta in North Litchfield Beach. Our kids all grew up together in a great Atlanta community. We have been doing this for well over 25 years and are family. 

 Have most of my health, have dear friends to care about and who care about us. Now, Live in The Garden of Eden of Georgia, have a wonderful wife and life is good. I don't deserve all of this.  

However, there is always a price to pay, a fly in the ointment, so to speak. It would be a far better world if those who are never content, always seek change, believe they know what is best for mankind, and who call themselves Democrats would look in the mirror and "... see themselves as others see them." 

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A very interesting article that, I believe, is correct. The worker will not be able to maintain the rise in compensation advantage for too much longer.  

The markets are acting as I thought they would when I wrote my thoughts a few days prior to surgery and this will be sent in  a memo May 20.

These are my updated  market thoughts:

Investors already know interest rates are going higher as is inflation.  They don't know how high in both cases.

Second, some of this, therefore, has already been discounted.

Third, investors know if interest rates and inflation are going higher then they already know it will reflect itself in lower corporate earnings.  Again this is already  somewhat discounted.

Fourth, what investors do not know is which companies will be able to maintain their margins, either by cutting costs, raising prices or doing more business. These three factors are more difficult to determine and therefore, to discount.

Finally, the Fed has a difficult road ahead because the reduction of their own  balance sheet and rise in interest rates could cause a recession and no one can predict how severe, how long  or if The Fed can maneuver and escape causing a recession.  History is against a Fed soft landing. Should we go into a recession I believe it s likely to be milder than the market currently believes.

That said, I also believe, even if there is a recession looming on the horizon, the economy, corporation balance sheets and consumers are in better shape financially to cope and this is more unusual than generally is the case.

That still leaves the market coping with Putin and Ukraine uncertainties, the potential  Biden could take a physical turn for the worse and a multitude of unknowns could come out of left field, as is always the case.  Thus, I believe the pressure on the market will remain and the trend for the next 2 quarters for stocks will , at the very least, be choppy and the trend for stocks more likely to go moderately lower (10%) than rise.

I still favor the energy, healthcare, discretionary consumer sectors and companies who can withstand wage increase demands, maintain strong balance sheets and continue to throw off free cash. I have been raising a little cash and am more a sideline observer 

Again, having said all that, what do I know.

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Workers Are at a Marketplace Advantage, but It Won’t Last

As the labor force expands, consumer demand cools, and the ‘great resignation’ proves illusory, the balance will shift toward employers.

By Michael R. Strain

When employers are in great need of relatively scarce workers, the balance of power in the labor market shifts. This was made clear this month when pro-union Amazon employees in Staten Island, N.Y., won a long-shot victory and when the second Starbucks location in the company’s hometown of Seattle voted to unionize. These major wins for organized labor have energized the labor movement at a time when it was already on the rise. The number of union-representation petitions filed with the National Labor Relations Board has surged by 57% over the past six months relative to the same period a year ago.

More broadly, workers are in the driver’s seat. This shows up in employer concessions on working conditions, flexibility and benefits and in wage growth. Last month nominal average wages for nonsupervisory workers increased at a 6.7% annual rate. Though this pace isn’t fast enough to keep up with inflation, it is considerably faster than the pre-pandemic norm. Nominal average wages in the leisure and hospitality sector increased by 11.8%.

Workers have substantial power because there have been relatively few of them when measured against employers’ needs. In the six months prior to the pandemic’s onset in March 2020, there were an average of 7.1 million job openings each month. Over the past six months, there have been an average of 11.1 million vacancies—a 56% increase.

While labor demand has been booming, supply has been stagnating for much of the past two years. There has been much discussion of the “great resignation.” Supporting this hypothesis, the number of workers quitting their jobs each month has soared since the spring of 2021. In addition, the rate at which adults participate in the workforce was stable for months, bouncing between 61.4% and 61.7% from June 2020 through last October.

Yet workers won’t continue to enjoy so much bargaining power, for four reasons. First, the “great resignation” was overhyped. Workers have been quitting their jobs more than usual, but the hiring rate has been increasing as well. Instead of a great resignation, we have been seeing upward mobility. Wages for workers who change jobs have been growing faster than average wages, and about one percentage point faster than for those who stay in the same job. In short, workers are quitting for better jobs. This means that there won’t be a long-lasting scarcity of workers driven by permanent exits from the workforce.

Second, workers are finally coming off the sidelines and back into the job market. The virus’s fading has made child care more reliable and lessened concerns about getting sick. Pandemic-era stimulus programs that may have kept workers on the sidelines have ended.

You can see evidence of this in the data from recent months. The overall workforce participation rate began rising in November. The rate of employment among people 25 to 54—generally too old to be in school but too young to be retired—is on track to fully recover its pandemic losses. In February 2020, 80.5% of people in this age group had a job. Last month 80% were employed. Even older Americans who may have been considering early retirement are largely going back to work.

Increases in workforce participation mean that labor is becoming less scarce. Even if demand remains unusually strong, an increase in the number of workers will erode their bargaining power and put downward pressure on their wages.

Third, productivity has been increasing. After adjusting for inflation, economic output was 2% greater in 2021 than in 2019, but there were nearly 2% fewer workers at the end of 2021 than at the end of 2019. Businesses have figured out how to produce with fewer workers. Given this, when today’s white-hot consumer demand cools off, businesses may reduce headcount more than they would have in earlier times.

Fourth, consumer demand will cool. The tight labor market that gives workers so much power is a symptom of an economy that is running too hot. High and rising prices will eventually reduce consumer demand for goods and services, which in turn will find businesses with less of a reason to compete so fiercely to attract and retain workers. In addition, in the face of high inflation, the Federal Reserve is trying to slow the economy. Another way to say this is that the Fed is trying to increase the unemployment rate. The Fed may even tip the economy into recession.

The risk of recession shows the importance of fiscal and monetary policy that aims for a rate of economic growth that is sustainable over the longer-term rather than allowing excessive short-term growth. Unfortunately, the American Rescue Plan and easy money from the Fed picked the latter over the former. An overheated economy has benefits for workers—but they are often short-lived.

Mr. Strain is director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute

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Who is Zelenskyy?

In June of 1941, Hitler's Army began a rampage through Ukraine, razing towns, unleashing death squads, and massacring Jews by the hundreds of thousands. In one village, four Jewish brothers enlisted in the military, said goodbye to their parents, and walked off to fight the Nazis.

By the war's end in 1945, only one of the brothers, named Semyon, was still alive. He returned to find that the Nazis had torched his entire village, burning his parents to death. Semyon's family was dead, and his beloved Ukraine was in ruins. The Nazis had murdered between 1.2 and 1.6 million Ukrainian Jews.

Semyon married a fellow Ukrainian Jew who had survived the war by fleeing her city, in which the Nazis had killed 5,000 Jews. Two years later, in that same city, they had a son, Oleksandr, keeping alive the family line that the Nazis had brought a razor's width from extinction. Thirty-one years after that, Oleksandr had his own little boy.

That boy was Volodymyr Zelensky, who grew up to become the President of independent, democratic Ukraine. Today, he leads his outmanned, outgunned, ferociously defiant nation against the onslaught of Russia. As Russia dashes itself against the will of his people, Zelensky, the survivor of survivors, summons the resilience of his ancestors. He does not bend.

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Van Jones Has Some Harsh Truths to Share About How the Democratic Party Has 'Overpromised, Undelivered So Far' 

By Rebecca Downs

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Wise answers:

If you ever testify in court, you might wish you could have been as sharp as this policeman. 

He was being cross-examined by a defense attorney during a felony trial. The lawyer was trying to undermine the police officer's credibility.....

Q: 'Officer --- did you see my client fleeing the scene?'

A: 'No, sir. But I subsequently observed a person matching the description of the offender, running several blocks away.'

Q: 'Officer, who provided this description?'

A: 'The officer who responded to the scene.'

Q: 'A fellow officer provided the description of this so-called offender. Do you trust your fellow officers?'

A: 'Yes, sir. With my life.'

Q: 'With your life? Let me ask you this then officer. Do you have a room where you change your clothes in preparation for your daily duties?'

A: 'Yes sir, we do!'

Q: 'And do you have a locker in the room?'

A: 'Yes, sir, I do.'

Q: 'And do you have a lock on your locker?'

A: 'Yes, sir.'

Q: 'Now, why is it, officer, if you trust your fellow officers with your life, you find it necessary to lock your locker in a room you share with these same officers?'

A: 'You see, sir, we share the building with the court complex, and sometimes lawyers have been known to walk through that room.' 

The courtroom EXPLODED with laughter, and a prompt recess was called. The officer on the stand has been nominated for this year's 'Best Comeback' line -- and we think he'll win. 

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In an interview, General Norman Schwarzkopf was asked if he thought there was room for forgiveness toward the people who have harbored and abetted the terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks on America. 

His answer was classic Schwarzkopf. 

The General said, "I believe that forgiving them is God's function... OUR job is to arrange the meeting." 

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Dana Perino (FOX News) describing an interview she recently had with a Navy SEAL. After discussing all the countries that he had been sent to, she asked if they had to learn several languages?

"Oh, no ma'am. We don't go there to talk."

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