They're Going to Try to Scare You. Don't Let Them. Part II.

Okay, so that was a big number - 3.3 million initial claims filed for unemployment insurance (Initial Jobless Claims, the topic of my last post) were filed the week ended March 21. If you look at a graph of claims historically, it looks like ... well, it looks like the face of El Capitan, as I predicted in that post.

The reporting the morning of the release was nothing short of comical. Some "business news" network's talking heads couldn't even get the terminology right. One network anchor wondered why the stock market was up so much after such a bad number. (Answer A: The Senate finally got their thumbs out of their backsides and passed the stimulus bill. Answer B: The House moved up the timing of their vote on the package and Speaker Pelosi indicated that it would pass. Answer C: The market had already priced in a really bad claims number. Estimates ranged from 1.5 million to more than 4 million.)

One national cable network anchor started an interview with one of their sister "business news" network's anchors by saying, "Even though this number was expected, it's still a shocker, right?" Yeah, I'm always shocked by news I expected. And the "business news" anchor then proceeded to conflate initial claims with ongoing (continued) claims in saying "this number" is only going to go higher next week because this is just the first time these people filed for benefits.

FYI, that "business news" anchor has a degree in Art History.

One local news channel - I won't name names but their initials are KSHB - seemed to conflate jobless claims with the unemployment rate: "The Labor Department saw an additional 3 million people seeking unemployment claims last week — the highest increase of unemployment claims the Labor Department has recorded since it began measuring seasonal unemployment. It also marked the highest level of insured unemployment since April 2018, when the unemployment rate was at 3.9 percent."

For one thing, unemployment claims are not "seasonal unemployment." And today's number wasn't due to seasonal factors (okay, so the virus is almost certainly seasonal, but I mean like seasonal layoffs in auto manufacturing as they shut down plants to re-tool). It was event-driven. And it isn't "insured unemployment," it's the number of people who filed claims to receive unemployment insurance benefits. Continued claims would be more akin to "insured unemployment." And finally, it's not the same as the unemployment rate.

But wait, it gets better: "According to figures released Thursday morning, 3.2 million people sought unemployment between March 14 and March 21." News flash: nobody seeks unemployment. Well, maybe those about to retire.

Okay, enough about the media dunderheads. To clarify things, let's look at the unemployment rate. And I chose this topic not only because of the dim-witted reporting, but because -

They're going to try to scare you again, this time when the next unemployment rate is released.

By definition, the unemployment rate is the number of unemployed, divided by the Civilian Labor Force. It is based on a survey of U.S. households. It is released on the first Friday of each month by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (with rare exceptions for Good Friday), and it is the unemployment rate as defined above, as of the end of the previous month. So on Friday, April 3, the March unemployment rate will be released. It will be considerably higher than the February rate of 3.5%, which was released on Friday, March 6.

And the media will try to scare you with it. Once again because they do not understand it in context, and they think it's their job to scare you. So a little history is in order.

The February 2020 unemployment rate of 3.5% - the same rate reported in September, November and December 2019 - is the lowest since 1969. So as was the case with initial jobless claims before the March 26 release, the unemployment rate recently has been at historically low levels, the lowest seen in a very, very long time.

More historical context: The record low unemployment rate was 2.5%, recorded in May and June of 1953 (at which point in time the Curmudgeon would not yet be unleashed on the world for more than five years). Thus the February 2020 rate is just a point above the record low. The record high of 10.8% was reached in November and December of 1982. The peak of the Great Recession was 10.0%, reached in October 2009.

And as is the case with Initial Jobless Claims, cyclical peaks in the Unemployment Rate tend to coincide with the ends of recessions - in fact, with the Unemployment Rate, it has been the case in every recession since the end of WWII that it has peaked after the recession officially ended. Usually just after, which again means that when the unemployment rate peaks, the worst is behind us.

Now that we've looked at record highs and lows, let's look at some trend data. But before we do, here's what the media will try to scare you with on Friday, April 3, when the March unemployment rate is released:

It's possible that it will be over 5%. And if not in March, it certainly could be in April.

So the headlines will read:
"Highest unemployment rate since (depends on how high it is; 6% would be 2014)!"
"Biggest one-month jump in the unemployment rate since (again depends on how high it is; 6% would be the biggest one-month jump ever, while 5.8% would be the biggest one-month jump since 1949)!"
And again, depending on how high the number is, "Unemployment rate nearly doubles!!!"

Okay. The average unemployment rate, going back to when the data was first recorded in 1948, was 5.73%. It has been below 5% only about 37% of the time, and of those 318 occurrences, 53 have come in the last 54 months. When Janet Yellen was Fed Chair (a dark time in economic history), her target unemployment rate was 5%. That was considered "good" - in fact, good enough to start raising interest rates to stave off inflation resulting from rising wages.

"Full employment" has long been considered to be 6%. (Technically speaking, "full employment" is one-half of the Fed's dual policy mandate: to promote stable prices, i.e. maintain low inflation, and to promote "full employment", which basically means "get as many people working as you can, but don't worry about the small percentage that might be more or less unemployable." Plus, there is friction in the number in that people in the survey may be in and out of a job at a given point in time, even in a good year.)

The unemployment rate has been above 6% about a third of the time, and we haven't been in recession a third of the time since 1948 - in fact, we've only been in recession about 14% of the months since January of that year. So the unemployment rate has been above 6% through about 20% of the non-recessionary months since just after WWII.

So understand that while an unemployment rate of 5% or 6% isn't as good a situation as we had before this virus hit, it's actually pretty good historically. And even if it goes higher, it's not likely to for long. Unless, again, you defy the scientists - the qualified ones like Drs. Fauci and Birx, not the self-described ones on Facebook - and believe that this thing isn't going to prove to be seasonal, and that this is going to last many months. But if that's the case, you're reading the tin-foil-hat posts on Facebook, not this, so I'm guessing that if you're still with me, you're okay.

Expect a number above 5%, and don't be "shocked" by what you expect. And know that in context, it's not the Great Depression. Far from it. In fact, most of the recessions during which unemployment peaked below 8% have been relatively mild, and short in duration.

Think of it this way: it's like the folks who have only been looking at mortgage rates since the Great Recession, and they think that a mortgage rate above 5% is "high." Historically speaking, it is not. My first mortgage carried a rate of 10.5%. It has only been during this very recent (since 2009) period of extreme and unprecedented accommodation by the Fed that mortgage rates have been below 5%. They've been as high as 18.6% - and people still bought homes. So just as sub-5% mortgage rates are not "normal," sub-5% unemployment is not "normal."

One final note: lest anyone be offended by my comments about the media: I have nothing against people with majors in Art History, Theology, or Interdisciplinary Studies. Heck, I once had an investment sales rep who worked for me who had a History degree.

Okay, bad example. I fired him.

My issue is when those folks join the media and try to apply their economic ignorance and innumeracy to the economy and the markets, and they sensationalize things to try to scare people, because if you're terrified, you're riveted, and they can sell more of their their sponsors' crap.

But look on the bright side: if you're a newly-minted grad with a degree in Etruscan Civilations facing six figures of student loans from an Ivy League college you couldn't afford because going to juco to be a paralegal was beneath you, you may be in luck: there's a promising future ahead of you. In "business journalism."

They're Going to Try to Scare You Again. Don't Let Them. Part III.

Two posts ago, I addressed how the media would try to use what would be a significant increase in Initial Jobless Claims to try to scare you. I talked about the results of that release in my last post, which addressed the unemployment rate. This post will focus on Continued Claims, which I introduced in the post about Initial Claims.

But first - the Curmudgeon would like to offer his humble thanks to all who shared the link to the post on Initial Claims. It was the most-read post in the history of this blog. So keep the shares coming, and maybe we can keep a lot more people from being scared (for the record, I don't make a cent from doing this). And if you liked the most recent post, feel free to share it too.

As a reminder, Continued Claims is the aggregate number of people receiving unemployment insurance benefits in a given week. There is a one-week lag in reporting the number vs. Initial Jobless Claims. Thus the Continued Claims number that was released on Thursday, March 26 showed total claimants as of the week ended March 14, whereas the Initial Claims number released that morning was for first-time filings as of the week ended March 21.

Now, it stands to reason that if initial claims spike, the following week's continued claims will jump. You may recall that initial claims captures people who file for the first time, then the next week they fall out of that total and move into the continued claims number, where they stay until they no longer qualify for benefits (found a job, no longer looking, benefits expired, etc.).

The move from initial to continued claims is not a precise additive transition. For example, initial claims for the week ended Mar. 7 were 211,000. The increase in continued claims from the week ended Mar. 7 to that ended Mar. 14 was 101,000, not 211,000. This could be due to some of the first-time filers going back to work (unlikely), some of the previously reported continued claimants going back to work (thus there were people moving into and out of the continued claims pool), or delays between filing and receiving benefits.

So, the continued claims total reported on Thursday, April 9 for the week ended Mar. 28 is unlikely to show an increase equal to the 3.3 million initial filers that we saw in the initial claims release for the week ended Mar. 21, which came out last Thursday and was the topic of that original post. But there will be a very large increase, easily over 1 million. The most recent reading was just over 1.8 million, so the number will increase by more than half, and could certainly double, or worse.

And the media is going to try to scare you with it.

The headlines this time will be:
"Highest continuing jobless claims since (probably 2012 or 2013, depending on the number)!"
"Biggest one-week increase in continuing claims in history!" (It will be.)
"Continuing jobless claims doubled in just one week (if the number does double)!"

And, as they always do because they are woefully under-qualified to report on economic data, they will muck up the terminology they use and the ways they abuse the data to the point that my Curmudgeonly head explodes, and I find myself standing in front of the television and cussing at it. (I'm doing a lot of that these days - my dogs are very confused.)

However, you should not be fearful as a result of the number, for several reasons. The first is that you now understand what it means, and you expect the large increase, just as you expect another increase the following week, and further increases in the weeks after that until initial claims subside and people go back to work, at which point the continued claims number will begin to fall. And, unlike the media simpletons, you are not shocked by that which you expected.

Second, let's look at historical highs, lows and trends for perspective, as we have done in the last two posts. The most recent continued claims total of 1.8 million as of the week ended Mar. 14 was the first reading above the 1.8 million mark since April 14 of last year. Things weren't so bad back then, right? So even though the last reading was up by 101,000 from the prior week, that shouldn't alarm us - historically, 1.8 million continued claims is a very low level.

How low? Well, in October of last year, continued claims were the lowest since 1973 at just under 1.65 million - pretty darn close to where we are today. The average from that low to the most recent reading is right at 1.7 million. So a trend between 1.65 million and 1.8 million is about as low as we're gonna get.

And if we go back to the early days of this data series, we find that the record low was 988,000 in May 1969. (The U.S. population was more than a third smaller, too - remember, denominators matter.)

Now let's look at highs. The record for continued claims was 6.635 million in May 2009, just after the end of the Great Recession. (By the way, for anyone unfamiliar with what I'm referring to when I reference the Great Recession, it's a name commonly given the most recent recession, from 2008-09, which was brought on by the housing collapse and subsequent financial crisis.)  Next highest was just after the 1981-82 recession, in November 1982, at about 4.7 million. And the third highest total followed the 1973-75 recession, at about 4.64 million in May 1975. No other recession since the claims data was first recorded in 1967 has seen continued claims reach 4 million.

What's significant about these highs and lows? First - and this is very important in terms of mitigating your risk of the numbers scaring you, so pay close attention - these spikes resulted from the three longest recessions in the history of the data. The Great Recession lasted 18 months, the longest downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The recessions of 1973-75 and 1981-82 lasted 16 months each. All three of these recessions were followed by slow recoveries. The next-longest recession since WWII lasted 11 months, and the average duration of recessions since WWII, excluding the three noted above, has been nine months.

Generally speaking, shorter recessions see shorter peaks in continued claims. However, it does not hold true that the shorter the recession, the lower the peak in continued claims. So if we see a peak above 4 million, as I strongly believe we will, do NOT assume that means we're in for a 16-month downturn. The 1980 recession lasted only six months, yet continued claims peaked shortly after it ended at slightly more than 3.9 million. I do not anticipate a prolonged downturn or a slow recovery, for reasons I have explained in previous posts.

Second, denominators matter (okay, so I'm sounding like a skipping record - younger readers will need to google that reference). So let's divide each of the three most severe peaks by the Civilian Labor Force at the time.

To recap, the peak of the Great Recession was 6.635 million continued claims. As a percent of the Civilian Labor Force at that time, continued claims were 4.29%. At the 1982 peak, continued claims were 4.19% of the labor force. And at the 1975 peak, they were 4.90% of the labor force - higher than in 1982 or 2009.

So, to exceed those levels on a percentage of the labor force basis, we'd have to see continued claims of more than 8 million - exceeding the most recent reading by more than 6 million. And yet, even if that happens, it's not the most significant indicator. Why?

Because the duration of unemployment matters most. Weeks unemployed peaked in July 2011 at 40.7. (That was 25 months after the recession ended.) The recovery from that recession was the slowest ever, due in part to fiscal policy and the causal factors of the recession. That record was far and away higher than any previous duration of unemployment. After the 1982 recession, weeks unemployed peaked at about 17. No other recession even came close. And as I've noted, I don't expect the duration of unemployment to reach the "worst-since" levels we've seen previously, for a variety of fundamental reasons.

Finally, the peak in continued claims always occurs after a recession officially ends, as is the case with the unemployment rate. So when that peak arrives, the worst is over.

The consensus forecast for the initial jobless claims release scheduled for Thursday, April 2 (for the week ended March 28) is around 3.5 million, which would exceed last week's record level by about 200,000, and set a new record. I'll go out on a limb and say that'll probably be the highest level we'll see, though there will still be new filings each week well in excess of the 210,000 or so trend that we were seeing before the pandemic response shut things down. So we probably will see a peak above 8 million continued claims, and the peak will probably occur within a few weeks. But that still doesn't foretell a prolonged downturn.

The duration of unemployment this time should be short. If we look at the model data from the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (the same model that has been referenced by Drs. Fauci and Birx - and more on models in a subsequent post), we see that in most states, the curve flattens within a couple of months. The modelers and experts seem to agree that this virus is likely to be seasonal. So if we assume that things will open back up within a couple of months, either on a rolling basis state-by-state based on curve flattening projections, or on a wider basis, then the duration of unemployment is likely to peak at a few weeks over and above the levels we were seeing before the virus hit.

A caveat about that. Those pre-pandemic levels were already at about 21 weeks, which was above the peaks that followed every downturn before the Great Recession. These levels were unusual given how strong the labor market was through February, and resulted from the government's response to the Great Recession. As part of that response, the amount of time someone could draw unemployment was extended to account for the extremely slow job growth at the beginning of the recovery.

However, that amount of time was never reduced in many large states when things normalized, and thus more recently was well beyond the time it would have taken to find a job in the prevailing labor market. So many people had a disincentive to work, if they could live off their unemployment checks. As a result, if the duration of unemployment resulting solely from the pandemic is about 11 to 16 weeks - as the curve data suggest - adding that to the "base" levels we saw in February could result in a reported duration of unemployment of more than 30 weeks, which would be historically pretty high. And would, of course, be distorted by the media to try to scare you.

One last point. My numbers could be wrong in terms of the level of the peak in claims or in the unemployment rate. Those peaks could be much higher. It doesn't matter this time - what's critical is the duration of unemployment. As noted before, there will (and has already been) a sharp, cliff-like spike in the unemployment metrics, but every indication from the medical data is that the duration will not be as long as seen in many recessions.

Remember that when the media tries to scare you with things like a recent St. Louis Fed blog post (which is already being sensationalized) that estimated that 47 million jobs would be lost in the second quarter and the unemployment rate could hit 32%, a record high. Even that blog post acknowledged that it is not the level but the duration of unemployment that is important in this environment. And their estimate also assumes that no part of the economy opens back up until after Q2, which contradicts the data regarding when the curve flattens throughout the U.S.

Stay calm, stay safe and stay sane.

They're Going to Try to Scare You. Don't Let Them.

In case you've been living under a rock for the last several weeks ...

Okay, wait. For many of us, it feels like that. Let me start over.

In case you haven't watched or read the news or been on social media for the last several weeks, I have some important information for you:

The news media believes that their job is to scare the bejeebers out of you, make you an anxious wreck, increase your blood pressure, and paralyze you with abject fear.

Yes, it's despicable. It is beneath contempt, and if they were capable of empathy, they would be ashamed. But they're not.

So on Thursday morning, March 26, 2020, in the middle of this coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing government-mandated shutdown of our economy, when they've already made you anxious enough -

They are going to try their best to scare the crap out of you. Don't let them. Read on, and you'll be far more informed than they will ever be.

Every Thursday morning, the U.S. Employment and Training Administration (ETA), a division of the Department of Labor, releases Initial Jobless Claims for the week ended the prior Saturday. So on Thursday, March 26, they will release the number for the week ended Saturday, March 21.

And it's going to be a bad number. The media is going to go into a frenetic Chicken Little dance over it.

Because they have no idea what the number means. It doesn't mean what they think it means. It doesn't mean what you think it means. Let me explain.

Initial Jobless Claims is a point-in-time number. It means something that week, then it means nothing the next week. It is a trend number, in that it is only important in context of the trend. And as the Curmudgeon has long been fond of pointing out, one week doth not a trend make.

The claims number represents the number of Americans who filed for unemployment insurance benefits in a given week. If those Americans are still unemployed the following week, they fall out of the number, because at that point, their claims are no longer initial. Another way to label it is "first-time unemployment filings." And there can only be one first time.

So it isn't cumulative (we have a couple of other numbers to capture that, but more on them later). For perspective, initial claims peaked at 665,000 in March 2009. The record was 695,000 in October 1982. This is incredibly significant - stay with me.

First, as my alter ego has been posting on social media pretty consistently lately, when it comes to statistics, the denominator matters. For example, the number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. is north of 50,000 - third in the world behind China and Italy. However, dividing the number of cases by a country's population, we find that the number of U.S. cases is .0054%, or 54 per 1 million population. China's is 59 per 1 million, South Korea's is 176 per 1 million, and Italy's, tragically, is 1,144 per 1 million, as of this writing (the evening of March 24).

In the case of initial jobless claims, we have to look at some denominator - either the Civilian Labor Force (those unemployed plus those employed), or the All Employees (Nonfarm) published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I prefer the former as it is more comprehensive.

So in March 2009 during the Great Recession, when initial claims peaked at 665,000, the number was 0.43% of the Civilian Labor Force (CLF). And at the peak of 695,000 in October 1982, when the U.S. population was much smaller, that number was .63% of the CLF. Get it? Larger numerator, smaller denominator. (And remember those dates - we'll come back to them.)

Now, that data would tell you that the recession of 1981-1982, which lasted 16 months and saw a trough in GDP growth of -6.69% year-over-year, was worse than the Great Recession of 2007-2009, which lasted 18 months and saw a GDP trough of -8.45%. The unemployment rate peaked in 1982 at 10.8%, vs. 10.0% in 2009.

As someone who lived through both recessions, I can tell you that '81-82 was bad. It was nearly a double-dip recession, coming on the heels of a much shorter and milder downturn in 1980. It was driven by extremely high energy prices, high inflation and high interest rates.

But 2007-09 was worse. It was driven by the most massive housing bubble the U.S., and the rest of the world, have ever seen. The fallout was Armageddon-like. And bubble-driven recessions tend to be more severe and far-reaching than those driven by other factors.

Back to jobless claims, and back to the present. For the week ended Feb. 1, 2020, initial claims totaled 201,000 - the lowest level since Nov. 1969 (when the Curmudgeon was but a lad, not the senior citizen he is today). That's a long time. The upshot is that claims of late have been near all-time historic lows.

So last Thursday, when the ETA reported that claims had increased 70,000, from 211,000 the week before to 281,000, the media's collective hair, real or otherwise, caught fire. At this point, they use their own irrelevant comparisons and misleading numerators to try and scare you, the unwitting:

• "The highest total since September 2017!"
• "The largest one-week jump in claims since 2012!"
• "The largest one-week percentage jump in claims since 1992!"

And the number on Thursday, March 26, 2020 will be worse. Much worse. But again, it doesn't mean what you or they think it means. Here's why.

Back to initial claims being a point-in-time number. For it to have meaning, we'd have to sum weekly initial claims over the entire duration of a downturn. Let's look at the Great Recession.

Because claims fluctuate weekly due to seasonal and other factors, it's hard to pinpoint when they started to rise due to the Great Recession, so we'll just pick the week of Jan. 26, 2008, when claims rose from 321,000 to 366,000 (the Jan. 19 number was the low for 2008, and claims averaged about 321,000 for all of 2007). If we start there, and total claims through the week before they fell back below 366,000 - Feb. 4, 2012 - we get a cumulative total of about 98 million initial claims.

Which is a meaningless number. Why? Well over the four-plus years from Jan. 2008 to Feb. 2012, some people who filed initial claims went back to work. Some may have given up and stopped looking for work, waiting for the job market to improve further, so they didn't qualify to receive benefits anymore.

Fortunately, we have a couple of more meaningful numbers related to unemployment insurance claims: Continued Claims and Weeks Unemployed. Let's look at those.

Continued Claims - also released each week by the ETA - counts those who are past the first week of filing claims for unemployment insurance. It works like this: let's say that on Monday, having lost my job, I file for unemployment insurance for the first time. That gets counted in Initial Jobless Claims for the week ended next Saturday, which will be reported the following Thursday morning. With me so far?

Okay. After that, I will no longer be counted among the initial claims, because, as noted previously, there is only one first time. However, if I remain unemployed and am continuing to file for unemployment insurance benefits, I will now be counted - for the first time - in the Continued Claims data series. And I will continue to be counted in that series until I no longer meet the requirements to file for benefits, or until I stop filing for benefits - in other words, until I stop looking for work, my benefits expire (currently 26 weeks in most states, but that's sure to get extended in the current situation, as it does in every other downturn), I get a job, or I just stop filing for some reason.

Continued Claims peaked at 6.6 million in May 2009, which was a record. But it's far less than the cumulative initial claims during that downturn of 98 million. Far, far, far, FAR less. Because the vast majority of those people had gone back to work. So don't let the Initial Claims number scare you.

Now, as for Weeks Unemployed, or the duration of unemployment. This measures the average number of weeks that those drawing unemployment insurance benefits remain on the rolls. So it is influenced by the extension of benefits by federal or state legislators during a downturn, as well as individual states' baseline benefits expirations. Generally, in a downturn, benefits will be extended, as noted above. This series peaked in July 2011 - more than two years after the end of the Great Recession - at nearly 41 weeks. It was the slowest of the employment data metrics to normalize. It fell to just under 20 weeks in July 2019, which was about where it was in 2005. This speaks to just how ugly the bubble-driven Great Recession was, and how long it took to recover from it. (The baseline trend on this metric has risen over successive downturns, as government increasingly extends benefits, providing a disincentive for people to go back to work for some jobs.)

One other point about Initial Claims - remember when I said we'd get back to the peak dates from 2009 and 1982? The Great Recession ended less than two months after the peak in Initial Claims. And the '82 recession ended within four weeks of that year's peak. In fact, every recession since 1975 has ended within weeks of that downturn's peak in Initial Claims. So if we see a big spike in the next release, and maybe another two or three after that before we hit a peak, you can rest assured the worst is pretty much over, at least for the economy.

So what does all of this mean? First, it means that whatever number we see on Thursday, March 26, 2020, it doesn't tell us much. We need to know how long this thing lasts, and how we recover from it, and that will only be evident in the Continued Claims and Weeks Unemployed data.

Second, we have every reason to expect - not hope - that this time will be different. In most recessions, and especially in bubble-driven recessions, initial claims follow a pattern that, if you graph it, looks like the Matterhorn: they begin rising, they rise sharply, they peak, they begin to decline, and then at some point they level off.

There's a reason for that, and let's use the Great Recession as our lesson. First, the builders who overbuilt, the developers who over-developed, the subprime mortgage lenders who made bad loans, and the title companies who closed those loans, shed jobs. Then, the restaurants those people used to eat at, the bars where they hung out, the hotels where they had their conferences, all saw sharp declines in business, and they laid people off.

Then, those people - who had taken out subprime mortgages - stopped paying on them, and more lenders failed. The Wall Street firms that securitized and bought those mortgages in mass quantities suffered losses. The insurance companies that issued credit guarantees on the bonds that securitized the subprime mortgages ran out of money to insure the losses, and they failed. And all the restaurants, bars, movie theatres, car dealerships, jewelry stores, clothing stores, and every other piece of the economy that depended on those jobs - they all suffered. The second- and third- and fourth-order effects were catastrophic.

This time, there was no asset bubble, so this thing won't develop over time. There will likely be no second- or beyond-order effects. The first few weeks of initial claims numbers should be the worst of it, at least if we get the economy opened back up again in relatively short order (and by that I mean by summer, when seasonality suggests that this thing should have run its course for this year, and we'll just have to see what happens next year - I'm sorry, I'm not one of those doomsday theorists who says this coronavirus will be unlike ANY OTHER the world has ever seen in that it won't be seasonal). In other words, instead of looking like the Matterhorn, with a steep upward slope toward a peak, followed by a steep downward slope back to the norm, it's more likely to look like a cliff - like El Capitan in Yosemite, but with a sharper downward slope like the Matterhorn after the peak is reached.

And why do I believe that the recovery from that peak will be sharp - even sharper, in fact, than the recoveries from the last two recessions?

Again, those recessions were driven by asset bubbles, both of which were fueled by excessive accommodation (read: too-low interest rates) by the Fed - first, the dot-com bubble in 2000-01, driven by the Fed cutting rates in 1998; and the housing bubble of 2007-09, fueled by low rates in response to the dot-com bubble.

Those recessions led to the kind of business failures I noted above. In the dot-com bubble's aftermath, there were far fewer tech firms, because they had overbuilt the tech sector on cheap money, and many of those companies never came back to pick up the slack. In the case of the housing bubble, a lot of those builders and developers never came back, because we had already overbuilt housing capacity relative to demand. The subprime lenders never came back, because we've learned our lesson about subprime lending and we're not going back there - nobody wants to take out the loans, no lender wants to hold the loans, and nobody wants to securitize the loans, or buy the securitized product. Everything else - restaurants, hotels, cruise lines, casinos, retailers - all recovered.

This time, the government, in the interest of saving lives, which is the right thing to focus on, forced those businesses to shut down. This time, there is no moral hazard. This time, the business impact is through no fault of the business sector. The government mandated this, and that's why the government is bailing companies and workers out. True, we must be careful to avoid perverse incentives. But the moral hazard of 2009 isn't there today.

So where does that leave us in terms of the rebound from the effects of this pandemic on our economy?

From my own little corner of the world, my clients have postponed some of my on-site visits, but not much else has changed. We may do things via webex in the interim. But when the dust settles, they will want me on-site again. So I will need plane tickets and hotel rooms and rental cars. I will have to eat out while I'm on the road. Multiply that from my tiny sector of the economy to far larger sectors, and you will see a significant rebound in travel.

Plus, I'm going to want to go on vacation again - aren't you? We already have our next cruise booked. I'm going to want to eat in restaurants, and go to movies, and go to bars (okay, so I don't go to bars much). People are going to want to take their kids to zoos and museums that are closed. Schools are going to re-open, even if not until next year. The Olympics will take place. The NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and college sports seasons will resume.

The demand is there. Things just have to open back up, which they will in due course. There will be spring after this winter, as there always is.

So the bottom line is, when the media tries to freak you out over Thursday's initial jobless claims number, don't let them. Now, you know better. You know that number better than they do if you've read this far. Godspeed, be safe, be sane, and be calm.

Bonus reading: lest you doubt my assertion that the media pundits don't know jack about economics, consider this:

• Ali Velshi, NBC/MSNBC's senior economic and business correspondent, and formerly CNN's Chief Business Correspondent. Has a degree in ... religious studies.
• Richard Quest, CNN's Business at Large Editor. Has a degree in ... law.
• Kelly Evans, CNBC co-anchor of Power Lunch. Has a degree in ... journalism.

'Nuff said, folks. You stand as good a chance of understanding this stuff as the media does.

'Twas the Night Before New Years'

‘Twas the night before New Years’, two thousand and twenty

The year past had brought us news items a-plenty.

What could we say about twenty-nineteen

Except, "Gee, what a wild one the last year has been."

The Democrats started the new year in power,

Having reclaimed the House. It was Pelosi’s hour.

Caressing her gavel, she vowed at each turn

To oppose the Republicans, and her heart burned

With desire for impeachment, though she claimed it must be

Bipartisan; then along came AOC.

Apparently owning the party’s left base,

She persuaded the Speaker to move with no case.

“Impeach!” cried the left wing, “Accuse him of treason!

If that doesn’t work, let's just make up a reason!

He’s mean; we don’t like him; he’s orange – that hair!

Impeach ‘cause winning in ’16 he did dare!”

So the Intel Committee, chaired by Adam Schiff

Held their secret hearings, secured in a SCIF.

No transcripts released; we the people weren’t able

To learn what was happening at that SCIF table.

Schiff, meanwhile, leaked out the bits that looked damning

To a media ready to take up the shamming.

When finally hearings were held in plain sight,

Schiff tried to paint the Prez in a bad light.

But in spite of made-up rules that favored the Dems,

Their hearings failed to reveal any new gems

That would bolster their case to impeach and remove,

Let alone give them any high crimes they could prove.

So, the best they could do was “Abuse and Obstruction

Of Congress,” who just seemed hell-bent on destruction

Of due process, fairness, and our Constitution –

How sad that our legislative institution

Could stoop to such lows, in a desperate quest

From their opposition, all power to wrest.

This is how partisan we have become;

Just thinking about it makes moderates glum.

Now, on to the Senate – but wait, Nancy balked!

As in a most strange turn, of fairness she talked.

But she has no leverage left, as we see;

In the Senate, the Dems aren’t the majority.

Meantime hints of new Articles started to rise,

Leaving voters to wonder, “What’s up with these guys?

Do they not think we see that they’re grasping at straws?

That their case for impeachment is so full of flaws?”

So while all of this nonsense is being conducted,

No new legislation is being constructed.

The Dems gained in ’16 on talk of health care,

But since, all their promises have gone nowhere.

Their primary field started with more than 20

Candidates vying to spend people's money,

But one by one, out of the race they did fall

(In the end, if we're lucky, there'll be none at all).

One of the hopefuls was Eric Swalwell,

But it seemed just a week before his campaign fell.
These days he's supporting his pal Adam Schiff
In another gambit doomed to fall off a cliff.

Next out was Beto - "Hell, yes," he once vowed,
But he couldn't keep pace with the rest of the crowd
In spite of his stunts and his gesticulations.
Guess it takes more than skateboarding to lead a nation.

DiBlasio followed soon after O'Rourke,
But he isn't even liked back in New York.
Harris was next, hoist with her own petard,
Though she, in denial, played the gender card.

So who will it be? Bernie? Spartacus? Liz?
Bloomberg or Steyer? Or Yang, the math whiz?
Or will it be Klobuchar, or Mayor Pete?
Or can Joe Biden help the Dems stave off defeat?

Whoever winds up at the top of the pile,
When they debate Donald Trump, don't touch that dial!
For whoever the winner from this crowded bunch is,
Will need to be able to take verbal punches.

Meanwhile, new trade deals are now getting done,

Thus the stock market’s been on a heck of a run.

A new budget deal was agreed to by all,

Including some funding for Trump’s border wall.

(Why fund the wall if you’re going to impeach?

Are you not confident in your plot’s reach?

Are you protecting your red-state comrades

From election results that will likely be bad?)

The numbers show strength in the economy,

So it's unlikely that a recession we'll see,

At least 'til November, then it just depends

On voters, and how the election night ends.

So - what to expect? What will this new year bring?

To be sure, a lot more partisan bickering.

More posturing from both the left and the right;

Relief from our divide is nowhere in sight.

But where does that start? Well, with you and with me.

Can we re-learn to respectfully disagree?

To accept other views without intolerance?

Or must we maintain such a divisive stance?

I hope that we can, but if we cannot,

Our differences still needn’t leave us distraught.

We’ve survived political divides before,

So I’m sure that we’re able to survive one more.

Just remember: we have more that keeps us united

Than those things that may serve to make us divided.

So let me express to all folks, red or blue

A happy and prosperous New Year to you!

A Symbolic Gesture

I love to walk my dogs, and they love their walks. Being males, they spend more time stopping, sniffing and marking territory than they do walking, but it's more about their experience than my exercise.

Their usual routine is to run helter-skelter to the island in our cul-de-sac, or to the first corner across from it, and mark the first spot. This is probably TMI, but that first stream is generally a pretty healthy one.

They continue down the street, marking pretty much every tree along the way (we have at least one street tree in every front yard in our neighborhood). After less than a block, there's nothing left in the tank. Yet they continue to stop, sniff, and lift their leg.

It's a symbolic gesture.

The House Democrats' vote to impeach Donald Trump on December 18 was the same: a symbolic gesture.

You see, the Dems have been pissing on Trump since he beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential election (read that again, snowflakes: he beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential election - not the Russians, not James Comey, not gender, just one candidate that the electoral majority favored over the other, for reasons that should by now be evident).

They emptied their tank with the Mueller Report, yet they had to lift their collective leg one more time. So they did.

And nothing came out. It was purely a symbolic gesture, like a dog trying to mark a tree with nothing to show for it.

What did we gain from the full House hearing, in which each member got a minute or two to state his or her position for or against impeachment?

Did someone toss out a revelation that made another Representative - or voter, for that matter - suddenly say, "Hey, I never thought of that before! By golly, I'm now for (or against) impeachment!"

No. It was just the same old recycled talking points, with the Dems throwing in a lot of crap they don't like about Trump, but aren't in the articles of impeachment they drafted (and yet constitute the real reasons they want him impeached): civility, decency, things he said on the campaign trail, "ripping babies from their mothers' arms," ad blauseum.

In fact, to that last point, Al Green (not the singer; the one without talent who takes up space in the House), who infamously set the stage by saying we have to impeach Trump so he doesn't get reelected, brought up the now-debunked photo of a little girl crying because she was purportedly separated from her parents at the border.

Hey, Al: 1) You weren't impeaching Trump over his border policy - in fact, you can't, any more than the GOP could have impeached Obama for any of his policies. 2) It's been proven that the picture you used had nothing to do with the propagandized message it was used for in the media. 3) If you truly believe that we the people cannot be trusted to decide who our President is, then you can't be trusted with public office, and should be sent back to wherever you came from, if they'll have you.

In short, the entire day was a waste of time, unless you count the one- to two-minute soundbites each Representative got as a free campaign ad for the constituents back home.

In the gospel according to Mark, we read, "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?"

Let's paraphrase, to put those words in context: "For what does it profit a political party to gain a symbolic victory, but forfeit its ultimate objective (and indeed, its soul)?"

In other words, what did the Democrats gain from this symbolic gesture that is akin to a dog lifting its leg without result?

Obviously, I can't ask my dogs what they get from this gesture. Are they hoping another dog will see them, and realize the territory being symbolically marked is now theirs? Is it reflex, as ingrained as turning around and around before they lie down? I don't know.

For the Dems, however, we can find some evidence of what they gained, in the polls. Now let me just say that I don't place much stock in political polls - haven't since 2016, at least. By the same token, I don't place much stock in economic surveys, like Consumer Confidence or the various manufacturing surveys. I prefer hard data, like retail sales, or industrial production, or construction spending.

Or electoral votes.

On the other hand, both economic surveys and political polls can be useful in identifying trends, shifting tides, if you will.

At the time a giddy Nancy Pelosi first announced the impeachment proceedings, 90% of Democrats polled favored impeachment and removal of President Trump. The most recent poll showed that number had shrunk to just 77%. Now, 77% is still a lot, but these are Democrats, after all, who are still in denial over the results of the 2016 election, don't need a valid reason to want Trump impeached, and most of whom don't understand the process to begin with. So while 77% is significant, it isn't surprising. What is surprising, and is even more significant, is the large shift between then and now.

I've been accused of saying there are no reasonable Democrats. These results prove that there are at least a handful. The shift probably represents those Democrats polled that actually do understand the purpose and process of impeachment.

Also at the time of Pelosi's announcement, head-to-head polls between Trump and various Dem primary candidates showed several of them beating Trump in 2020: Biden, Warren, Sanders, and in at least one early poll, Mayor Pete. (I can't spell his last name. Don't ask me to try.)

Granted, these are national polls, which mean nothing given the Electoral College (right, Hillary?) And, they're still a year out from the election. Still, and again, shifts in polling can indicate shifts in sentiment.

And guess what? The latest U.S. News poll (hardly a Trump-friendly media outlet) showed Trump beating all Democrat comers head-to-head, some quite handily.

Dollars represent another strong indicator. And the GOP raised a record $20.6 million in November.

Who'da thunk the Democrats could turn Donald Trump into a sympathetic figure?

Yes, what Pelosi and Co. have gained through their symbolic gesture is what appears to be almost certain defeat in 2020. They have achieved the goal held since 2016 of leaving a permanent asterisk on Pres. Trump's legacy, but likely at the cost of losing their House majority and the White House in 2020. And given the nature of this proceeding, that permanent asterisk might look more like a badge of honor than a scarlet letter.

So now what? After harping on the urgency of impeaching Trump, to avoid him doing "further irreparable harm to our Republic," suddenly Pelosi is putting on the brakes. She wants Senate Majority Leader McConnell to show his hand. Her Senate lapdog, Chuck "I love TV cameras" Schumer, is already complaining about not getting his witnesses approved, before the Senate process has even begun.

Sorry, Nancy and Chuck, this is in the Senate now. You no longer get to make up the rules to suit you. It's the GOP's turn.

Personally, I'm torn between two options. The first is a prolonged trial in the Senate, in which the GOP calls Adam Schiff, his pal the whistleblower, Joe and Hunter Biden, Loretta Lynch, Bill Clinton (to talk about his tarmac meeting with Lynch, during which they purportedly talked about soccer), Eric Holder, James Comey, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, John Brennan ... you get the idea. Keep Bernie and Warren and Klobuchar and Spartacus (not that the latter two are still relevant in the race) off the campaign trail and in the Senate chambers. Give Mayor Pete an "edge-edge" to "boot."

However, that could lend credence to this whole charade (plus there are too many Republicans who would insist on playing by the rules; the reason the Dems can more easily unify in these pitched partisan battles is that they're more uniform in their unscrupulousness).

So my second option would be for McConnell to rightly call this what it is and has been, a verdict in search of a charge, a partisan charade, payback for impeaching Bill Clinton and for defeating his wife, and say, "Enough! We're not going to legitimize this nonsense with a trial; we're going straight to a vote. And then we're going to get back to doing what the people for whom we work sent us here to do."

As much as I'd like to see the trial, enough of my tax dollars have been wasted watching the Democrats dry-piss on a tree. Let's not mark the rest of the block. There's nothing in the tank, and there is real work to be done.

This is It - Make No Mistake Where You Are

You'll have to read to the end to understand the title of this post. Sorry.

After my last post, I received a number of comments and messages, as is typical. Usually, I'll get some comments and messages agreeing with what I've said, some that may correct minor points, and some that flat-out disagree with me.

That's okay; I encourage that. Diversity of thought is under attack in the media, on our college campuses, in some cities, and elsewhere in our lives, so if I can provide a forum for it, I'm more than willing.

This time, however, no one disagreed with my premises regarding the impeachment process, nor with my comparison between the House's committee impeachment hearings and the Senate Judiciary Committee's questioning of IG Horowitz. No one even took exception to my assertion that Trump was never worried about Biden as a serious political adversary, because even the Democrats are fearful that Biden can't beat Trump.

No, this time there were but two camps: those who agreed with my points, and those who ignored them altogether to point out other awful things about Trump, most notably his mean-spirited tweets, although one messenger went on at length about all the names Trump called his Republican primary opponents.

Most of whom support him now, but apparently somebody is still pissed about it.

The most common theme related to Trump's ill-advised and wholly unnecessary tweet about Greta Thunberg a few days ago. Now, I have friends with autistic kids, and I'm very compassionate about that particular condition. I would like to tone down the emotion, however, and point out a couple of facts.

First, while Ms. Thunberg may be considered by some to be a "child," she is sixteen years of age. Still too young for Trump to be targeting her in a tweet, just as Barron Trump - who is kept out of the public eye - is too young to be publicly targeted by a law school professor who would rather cross the street than walk in front of a Trump hotel, so deep is her hatred of the man. (I don't recall any of the same folks calling out that behavior as unacceptable. Maybe it's okay, depending on who the child is.)

Second, Ms. Thunberg has Asperger's syndrome, which is within the autism spectrum, but is a particularly high-functioning manifestation. No matter; these may well be distinctions without differences. However, it seems to me that to use the characterization of "autistic child" when that isn't quite accurate is merely an attempt to evoke sympathy and vulnerability in making Trump out to be even worse than he is, when it comes to his tweets, which comes across as exploitative.

It's not necessary - he's bad enough on his own. I'll state yet again for the record: I do not defend his tweets. I find them churlish, ill-mannered, unnecessary, immature, inappropriate, bombastic, superlative, braggadocious, crude, distasteful and hyperbolic. Write it down. I don't want to keep repeating it. And I don't need to defend myself to anyone, thank you (see Matt. 7:5).

However, there is something that folks should be aware of regarding young Ms. Thunberg, and then I'll make a few observations.

There are at least a couple of left-wing climate change groups behind her, one of which paid her way across the pond on a boat to address the U.N. on the topic. (What, you thought she paid her own way by flipping burgers at a Swedish McDonald's?) And why would they do that?

Because she is indeed a sympathetic and vulnerable face on the radical fringe of the climate change movement - you know, the "we'll all be dead in 12 years" faction.

To disagree with her is to be perceived as attacking her, and it's despicable to attack a child with a disability. So she's held up in front of the climate change extremists as a human shield, so that if you attack the cause, you're a reprehensible cad.

Just as Christine Blasey Ford was held up by Dianne Feinstein et al in defense of preventing Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court: none of the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee dared question her allegations, though her own witnesses couldn't corroborate them, for fear of being seen as attacking a victim of assault. Never mind that the myriad allegations against Kavanaugh probably set the Me-Too movement back years.

And just as former Ambassador Yovanovitch was held up by Adam Schiff et al as a poor, sympathetic woman who was *gasp* fired from her job! No one dared call her a disgruntled former employee, in spite of the fact that she clearly came across as one; no one dared question her service record in the various hot-spots in which she served, no matter how things turned out in those places. She is, after all, a woman.

Vulnerable as they may be, neither Amb. Yovanovitch nor Ms. Thunberg seemed as triggered by Trump's tweets about them as were their defenders. The Ambassador, after Schiff read Trump's tweet about her to her, proceeded to testify against him for hours. And Ms. Thunberg, who herself refers to Asperger's as a "superpower" that contributes to her ability to stand strong for her cause, responded with her own clever tweet, which was a pretty solid counter-punch. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Trump read it, chuckled, and said to himself, "Well played, Greta."

Now, some observations. First, regarding Greta's being named Time Magazine's person of the year, I offer my congratulations. I do, however, wonder how many trees are cut down every year to print magazines. Seems that if she's serious about the environment, Greta might want to thank Time for the honor, but admonish them for deforestation.

Second, I find her chosen form of protest curious: she stages school strikes, wherein students skip school to protest against climate change. If it's fine with her parents, it's fine with me. It just seems ironic that she's skipping science class to protest against climate change. Maybe she already knows everything there is to know about climate science.

Third, none of the above should be misconstrued by anyone as attacks on her. They're just curiosities I have, born of the irony of their circumstances. I am probably more bothered by her being exploited by her handlers and her defenders than her defenders are. I will, however, bar no holds in taking shots at adults who take their climate science policy cues from a 16-year-old non-scientist.

Back to Trump's tweets. Look, I wish he wouldn't tweet at all. To some extent, he has to in order to get his message across; CNN, MSNBC and ABC will never report positive economic data, or cover Trump visiting our troops in Afghanistan on Thanksgiving (instead letting themselves be hilariously trolled into saying he's playing golf, a clever gambit which exposed the media for what they are), or show the applause he received at this year's Army-Navy game. So he has to resort to Twitter to get those messages into the mainstream.

But I'd be happy if he just closed his account, or turned over control to a cooler head within his press team.

And yet -

None of his tweets constitute an impeachable offense.

So the fact that his mean tweets were universally invoked as a response to my post about the sham of an impeachment process Congress is now wasting its time and our money on, rather than any substantive defense of "abuse of power" or "obstruction of Congress," or any argument in support of Joe Biden's prowess as a threat to Trump's re-election, is pretty much evidence that -

This is it - make no mistake where you are. If you believe that Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office, your basis for that action - which should be reserved for the most egregious and serious of offenses - is that you don't like the guy.

That's a slippery slope down which we as a nation do not want to venture, but I fear we're headed that way. This may well become how we wage political campaigns in the future, and how our legislators spend our hard-earned tax dollars.

A final note: I have been remiss, as the author of a blog originally devoted to economic and market topics, in not weighing in on the equity market's take on this impeachment imbroglio.

In a word, the market's reaction is *yawn*.

Now, during the Nixon impeachment process, the market was tanking, but the economy was in recession, and there was a looming oil crisis. (Today, the U.S. is the #1 energy producer in the world. You won't see that on MSNBC.) And during the Clinton impeachment process, the market was rallying, but Alan Greenspan was busy inflating the dot-com bubble.

More recently, the market has fluctuated, but only due to trade concerns or hopes, and overwhelmingly positive economic data.

What's significant about that, especially in light of the market's apparent nonchalance over the Nixon and Clinton impeachments?

Under Nixon, the economy was in the toilet - it wasn't going to matter who was President.

Under Clinton, the market was rallying, but thanks largely to the Fed. Plug in Al Gore, and the market likely doesn't suffer greatly, not with interest rates at then-record lows.

But remember what happened when Trump was elected? The market, which had been trading sideways based on an economy that could barely average 2% growth under an administration with decidedly unfriendly policies toward business, sold off in overnight futures trading by some 800 points after it was announced that Trump won.

Then, not only did the market recover those losses by the open, but it finished the day up 300 points.

An 1,100-point swing in 24 hours' trading is unprecedented, and undeniably triggered by an event - in this case, the election of Donald Trump as President. And the rally has continued, with major indices having set about 100 new records since that day. The business sector likes the guy, whether you do or not.

If the market were fearful that Trump would be removed from office, knowing that the Dems would then likely go after VP Pence, it would be spooked into record lows by the prospect of Pres. Pelosi.

But the market is betting that Trump won't be removed. And the market usually isn't wrong about these things.

A Tale of Two Hearings

Let's get right down to it, and contrast the House Intel Committee's impeachment hearing process - start to finish, including the private depositions taken in a SCIF in the basement of the House - and the House Judiciary Committee's more recent "hearings" on articles of impeachment, to the Senate Judiciary Committee's questioning of Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

The Intel Committee, chaired by Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA; as if we couldn't have figured that out from the way he handled the process), began its proceedings by holding private hearings in said SCIF, instead of in front of the American people. Republicans were not allowed to call witnesses, nor were their questions allowed in most cases. No transcripts were released, but Schiff did selectively leak anything that he thought the media could turn into points scored for his cause - his verdict in search of a charge.

It then proceeded to public hearings, in which no fact witnesses were called save one, and his testimony directly quoted the President as saying he wanted no quid pro quo from Ukraine in exchange for U.S. aid. The Republicans' requested witnesses were denied, and a number of their questions were struck down by Schiff.

Next, we heard from three so-called constitutional law experts on the Democrat side, and one on the Republican side. The Republicans' witness testified that he is a registered Democrat and opposes Pres. Trump's policies; presumably that's the only way he cleared Schiff's extreme vetting process. All three of the Dems' law prof witnesses were proved to have bias against Trump; one was so vociferous that, in a previous interview, she claimed to have had to walk across the street rather than walk down the sidewalk in front of a Trump hotel. When asked if she would stay there, she said, "God, no!" No bias there.

The Republicans' witness, despite his party affiliation and opposition to Trump, warned that if the Dems proceeded down this ill-advised, unsupported impeachment path they, not Trump, would be guilty of abuse of power.

In Hollywood, they call that foreshadowing.

On to Rep. Jerry Nadler's (D-NY; as if we couldn't have figured that one out too) House Judiciary Committee "hearings." Mostly we got to hear from the Dems' lawyer interpreting all the second-hand hearsay testimony from the Schiff-show, and the Republicans' lawyer refuting it. Then we got to hear all the committee members spend a long day "debating" the two flimsy articles of impeachment: "Abuse of Power" and "Obstruction of Congress." It was pretty far-ranging, going well beyond those two topics. The Dems kept throwing out all these things that they don't like about Trump, which left one to ask, "So what is it you're impeaching him for? Trump University? His charity? His family? His tweets? His hair? Beating Hillary Clinton?"

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) had the most succinct, factual and logical point of the day (a low bar, to be sure), when he said that it is the Dems in the House that are guilty of abuse of power and contempt of Congress. Abuse of power, for denying the minority due process, and contempt of Congress, for refusing to hear relevant testimony from true fact witnesses.

We did learn at least one interesting thing from the Democrat side, however: Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell's sister is a yoga instructor. Wow, thanks for that nugget, Debbie - it's very much germane to the matters at hand, and your bringing it to America's attention is a damn good use of the taxpayers' money. Really? Is that all they've got? Hey, I have a cousin who teaches music - can we get that on the record?

What happened to bribery? (You know, the charge that the Dems paid even more of the taxpayers' money on a focus group to come up with.) What happened to extortion? What happened to the vacuous Eric Swalwell's attempted bribery and extortion? What happened to quid pro quo?

"Dust in the Wind," as the old song goes. And once the dust has cleared, we're left with "abuse of power" and "obstruction of Congress," which the Dems can't even stay on point to defend.

But I digress - on to Sen. Lindsey Graham's Sen. Judiciary Committee's questioning of IG Horowitz. The latter's report seemed to give the DOJ and the FBI a pass, much to the dismay of some Republicans and the delight of all Democrats. But wait - there's more.

Sen. Graham and the Republicans on the Committee masterfully got to the more troubling matters behind the IG's findings, which were limited in part by the scope of his investigation. Horowitz clearly stated that an FBI lawyer flat-out lied in doctoring an email that was used as the foundation for the application for the FISA warrant that resulted in going after Carter Page. He further stated that he knew of no previous example of that being done, and conceded that if a private citizen had doctored evidence in such a matter, it would be grounds for prosecution.

Also, after Horowitz' report was released, former FBI Director James Comey said it "vindicated" him. When asked if that was the case, Horowitz replied that his report vindicates no one.

This ain't over. Look for the FBI (under new leadership; Wray is rightfully toast after this) and the AG to investigate further. Heads may yet roll, and charges may yet be on the way.

Where Schiff was smarmy and Nadler bumbling, Graham was professional. Where Schiff and Nadler were secretive and obstructive, Graham was transparent and open. Where Schiff and Nadler were vague and arbitrary, Graham was precise.

At the end of the long day of House Judiciary Committee hearings on Thursday, one important thought came to mind. This is the crux of this matter, so consider it carefully. The Dems' entire premise is that Trump sought a quid pro quo from Ukraine (or committed bribery or extortion or attempted bribery or attempted extortion or ... well, ah, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress - yeah, that's the ticket!) in withholding aid from Ukraine (that was paid to Ukraine in a timely manner), in exchange for a personal favor.

What favor? He allegedly wanted Ukraine to dig up dirt on a political rival, namely Joe Biden, for Biden's admittedly - indeed, braggadociously - having held up aid to Ukraine unless it did him the personal favor of firing a prosecutor who was investigating the matter of Biden's son being paid $50,000 a month to sit on the board of a company whose product he knew nothing about, and he had no experience in Ukraine (but Joe, as then-VP, was responsible for dealings with Ukraine). Quid pro quo, anyone?

Now, why did Trump supposedly want Biden investigated?

Several Dems, throughout these proceedings, have asserted that it was because polls showed that Biden would beat Trump head-to-head in the general election.

National polls. We learned in 2016 how reliable those are, when Hillary Clinton was leading Trump in national polling right up to Election Day, when he handed her her pant-suited arse in the Electoral College. And these polls cited by the Dems are more than a year out from the election, even well before the Democrat nomination. So we don't even know if Biden will remain the front-runner (he hasn't consistently been).

So, here's the key question for Democrats: If you're so sure that Trump sought dirt on Biden because Trump was afraid Biden would beat him in the general election -

Why are you so afraid that he can't??

See, if the Dems were confident that Biden could beat Trump, they wouldn't be seeking out new candidates at this late date. They had a field of 20+, but apparently they were concerned that none of them could win in 2020. So along comes Michael Bloomberg. There are rumors - pleas, even - for Hillary Clinton to once more enter the fray, or for Michelle Obama to try "Becoming" President (see what I did there?).

No one, not even the Dems, is afraid that Biden might beat Trump. In fact, quite the opposite is true: Dems are deathly afraid that he can't. 

And that, my friends, is the reason for this fallacious and fruitless attempt to remove him from office.