Perhaps the most amazing aspect of the seemingly imminent demise of Sears (story at the link below) is that this is the company that pioneered selling from a distance. The Sears Catalog was an iconic product making Sears a household name across the country in both rural and urban areas.
I will not pretend to be an expert on international relations and fully understand the incredible array of issues to resolve in a deal like Brexit. However I find it amusing the number of miscues occurring and how they fail to demonstrate any understanding of bargaining or simple game theory. The article linked below is just the latest example of this.
Over the last few weeks there were multiple calls to the radio show regarding the Federal Reserve’s recent interest rate moves and where they are going. There is a general questioning of why the Fed is moving to raise rates now.
Continue reading The Fed and Normalization
The Mercatus Center at George Mason University issued their 2018 rankings of states by fiscal condition. You can find the North Dakota discussion here. As a point of reference North Dakota was ranked in the top 5 each of the previous three years. The current ranking puts the state squarely in the average category.
Continue reading State Fiscal Rankings-ND #19
I really really want to read the USMCA trade deal. I realize I am one of the few that does, but the fact is that North Dakota is a state that looked to lose a great deal from the trade war since this state had the highest per capita trade surplus with China, Mexico, and Canada. But I cannot find a full version of the agreement in a single PDF, only each individual section. This makes text searching for my key terms almost impossible. But then I sit back and realize that the document is not yet available in Spanish and I say, maybe my convenience is not the biggest deal. There is a whole country that is part of the deal that cannot get the document in their native language right now, just in English, from the US Trade Representative’s website. I mean Article 34 Section 8 says, “The English, French, and Spanish texts of this Agreement are equally authentic.” It says nothing about their existence I suppose.
Continue reading USMCA and ND