Janet Yellen: "You don't have a recession when you have the lowest unemployment rate in more than 50 years"

You don't have a recession when you have 500,000 jobs and the lowest unemployment rate in more than 50 years.  What I see is a path in which inflation is declining significantly and the economy is remaining strong."

~ Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, as appeared on ABC's Good Morning America, February 6, 2023

Carl Icahn on artificial intelligence

Some people get rich studying artificial intelligence.  Me, I make money studying natural stupidity.

~ Carl Icahn

Stephanie Pomboy on the myth of strong corporate balance sheets

I don't think the excesses on the credit side are on the consumer balance sheet so much as they are the corporate side which was the prime credit taker during this free money bonanza.  Bloomberg just reported that in January large corporate bankruptcy filings were the largest since 2010.  So you're already starting to see things turn, and as I suggested with this idea that it was an interest rate shock, that hit, when it happens... is going to be much more profound than the markets presently expect.  They're looking for sort of a gradual and modest deterioration in credit conditions and I think we'll see something far more severe and that it will play out much more rapidly.  The interest rate hit doesn't happen until you have to pay higher interest rates, obviously, so if you have an adjustable rate mortgage and they take mortgage rates to 7% at the peak, that didn't affect you at all if you didn't have a reset.  It only affects you when the time comes to reset.  And the same is true, obviously, on the corporate side.  On that score, there are several myths around the strength of corporate balance sheets, but an important one is that companies shrewdly took the opportunity to lock in the incredibly low borrowing costs that we saw during the pandemic/stimulus bonanza for as long as they possibly could...  The fact is, they may have borrowed long, but they borrowed a ton short.  And we know that because there's a trillion dollars in corporate debt here in the U.S. that has to roll this year and then there's another trillion that has to next year and there's another trillion in 2025.  So there's going to be no relief from this impact of higher interest rates in the foreseeable horizon.  The only thing, I guess, that could stave off a significant wave of corporate delinquencies would be for the Fed to swiftly pivot and cut rates back down to where they were.

~ Stephanie Pomboy, "Don't Be Fooled: A Hard Landing Lies Ahead For The Economy (And Markets)," Wealthion, 7:45 mark, January 31, 2023

Henry Adams on politics

Politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds. 

~ Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (1907), Chapter 1

Vanity Fair on the political fight over taking credit for the Covid vaccines

“Trump's supporters want him to get credit for the vaccine which many of them refuse to get as a way of owning the libs.  Got that?” the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser tweeted Wednesday night.  Fox News, which can’t seem to get its COVID vaccine story straight, “almost immediately aired a complaint that Biden didn't extend a thank-you to Trump for accelerating the vaccine timeline,” according to CNN’s Brian Stelter.  Both Stelter and Glasser point to hypocrisy on the part of Trump supporters, particularly those on conservative media outlets like Fox, who at once argue the former administration deserves more credit for the U.S. vaccination effort and fuel skepticism about getting the jab.  Trump on Thursday called vaccine hesitancy “a big situation” but didn’t commit to doing anything about, even as he acknowledged requests for him to make a public service announcement promoting the vaccine to his followers, as Biden’s top health official urged this week.  As Politico reported, all living former presidents and first ladies appeared in a vaccine PSA last month—with the exception of the Trumps.  In January, the former president opted not to get the shot publicly, as other officials did, and his endorsements of the vaccine have largely been made in passing.

~ Vanity Fair, "Trump's Latest Delusion: 'I'm the Father of the Vaccine'," April 29, 2021

Donald Trump: "I'm the father of the vaccine"

They want me to do public service messages and everything about everybody taking the vaccine and look, I guess in a certain way I'm the father of the vaccine because I was the one that pushed it.  To get it done in less than 9 months was a miracle.  Fauci said it would take 3 to 5 years.  He thought it was something that just wouldn't be that effective because it would take so long to get.

I pushed the FDA like they have never been pushed before.  I wouldn't exactly say they're in love with me.  This is a very bureaucratic organization.  I pushed them like they've never been pushed before and that's why we have it.  When they did the pause on Johnson & Johnson, I thought that was a very very stupid thing to do.

~ Donald Trump, Fox Business interview, April 29, 2021

Jim Chanos: bear market could go as deep as 1,800-2,000 on the S&P 500

I’ve been on the Street [since] 1980 [and] not one bear market has ever traded above nine times to 14 times the previous peak earnings.  If you think [S&P 500] earnings are peaking now at $200, that’s a long way down.  That’s 1,800 to 2,800 [on the S&P].  We are not anywhere near that.

~ Jim Chanos, "Short-selling legend Jim Chanos hints at risk of bear market unlike anything he’s experienced since starting on the Street in 1980," MarketWatch, January 31, 2023

(S&P 500 closed at 4076.60.)