Sign of the Apocalypse – And NO It Isn’t the Eclipse

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Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #992
04/08/2024
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1) Sign of the Apocalypse - And NO It Isn’t the Eclipse
This headline from the Daily Mail is deeply disturbing to anyone who believes that we need to reward and encourage achievement and excellence:

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According to the story, Seattle’s “gifted and talented programs will be ended because “black and Hispanic students were underrepresented at the schools.”

According to Seattle Public School data, of the “highly capable students” in the 2022-23 school year, 52 percent were white, 16 percent were Asian and 3 percent were black.

The programs will be phased out over the next four years, in part because of a $100 million funding shortfall.

Hey, we have an idea for Seattle: close down the LOWEST-performing schools, not the highest-performing schools.

One school board president complained that the program does a “masterful job of tokenizing a really small community of color.”

We wonder if the parents of kids in the program are at all insulted that their sons and daughters are being described as “tokens.” When you cut through this academic flim-flam rhetoric, what the school board is saying is that it is somehow racist to reward some high-performing minorities over minorities with lower skills. It’s a threat to democracy or something.

When academic achievement is punished and racial equity is promoted above merit... Seattle, we have a problem.

This isn’t an isolated event. One of the top science and math high schools in the country, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, in Fairfax County Virginia, is also under attack because a disproportionate percentage of the students are Asians.

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2) Inflation: An Alternative View
Last week we showed that commodity prices are soaring and we reminded readers that this is a lead indicator of higher consumer inflation. (The commodity index is now up 15% since the start of the year.)

We got lots of responses on that, including from our friend and investment ace Scott Grannis. Scott is predicting moderate inflation over the rest of the year due to slow monetary growth. This is a more traditional monetarist view of inflation, and it’s worth paying attention to.

Scott notes that M2 (the Fed’s favored definition of the total supply of money in the economy) continues to shrink as a share of the economy. After the explosive growth of M2 in 2020 and 2021, M2 has been slightly negative and it has returned to its 6% trend growth.

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As his chart shows, M2 growth has been a reliable predictor of inflation with about a one-year lag, and if that relationship holds up, inflation will start to fall.

That’s a big IF, and given the continued torrent of government spending expected this year and next, we still think it’s going to be hard to stop the rise in prices.

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3) Pretty Soon Everyone Will Be Working for Uncle Sam or in Hospitals and Nursing Homes
It was a really good jobs report if you work for the government or in health care. Most everything else (especially the goods-producing industries) is pretty flat.

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4) Speaking of Inflation, in California, the Dollar Stores Are Closing – Get Ready for the $2 or $3 Store
For over 40 years, The 99 Cents Stores were a California institution offering closeout merchandise for 99 cents (or less), though that crept up with inflation. But now it’s been forced to close all 371 of its stores and lay off 14,000 employees.

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But don’t worry: Biden and the New York Times keep assuring us that the inflation problem is over.

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5) First, It Was ESG In Retreat. Now, It's DEI.
HOTLINE readers know how much progress CTUP and others have made in getting financial institutions to back off promoting an ESG agenda (It stands for “environment,” “social,” and “governance”, but often encompasses other left-leaning priorities related to race, sex, and ethnicity).

That agenda was in direct violation of the legal obligation to try to earn the highest return for their clients, including tens of millions of retirees and other American savers.

Now, counterattacks on DEI, or diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring programs appear to be working.

Axios reports: “The backlash over DEI has shaken the business community…businesses are shedding DEI jobs across almost every sector...” The number of DEI, diversity, equity, or inclusion mentions during quarterly earning calls has declined from over 300 to less than 75.

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There is a better way to achieve diversity than quotas and DEI strong-arm tactics.

A Harvard Business Review study points to a different solution: “In analyzing three decades’ worth of data from more than 800 U.S. firms and interviewing hundreds of line managers and executives at length, we’ve seen that companies get better results when they ease up on the control tactics. It’s more effective to engage managers in solving the problem, increase their on-the-job contact with female and minority workers, and promote social accountability—the desire to look fair-minded. That’s why interventions such as targeted college recruitment, mentoring programs, self-managed teams, and task forces have boosted diversity in businesses.”

And all of that has the advantage of not being unconstitutional.

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6) Blame It On Trump

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