Friday Fun

The calendar has turned, and we find ourselves on the backside of Labor Day.  Halloween, however, is nearly two months away.  America finds itself in a sort of doldrums.  Summer is unofficially over, yet the holiday season has not arrived.  Many Americans resort to Pumpkin Spice Lattes (PSL) as a way of taking the edge off of this uneventful period.  If that’s you

Every August since 1982, the Kansas City Branch of the Federal Reserve System hosts an event in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  It’s like an economic summer camp, although they probably forego the sticky fingers that come with s’mores.  The idea is to foster open discussions about the economy, exchanging ideas and probably a few barbs.  Typically, the event centers around a s

For many food is an art; for others, it’s an economic indicator.  When times are good, Americans spend on eating out instead of preparing less costly equivalents at home.  As the tide changes, diets tend to change.  Instead of frequenting venues with menus, consumers opt for more affordable, shelf-stable items like rice, pasta, beans, lentils, and oats, along with canned go

Steam engines and factories transformed the modern way of life during the Industrial Revolution.  It rendered many technologies and skills obsolete while opening up an entirely new set of opportunities for those willing to transition away from a cottage industry into the more scalable competition that mechanization created.  Today, the economy could be in the middle of a similar trans

Arthur “Pop” Momand created the comic “Keeping Up with the Joneses,” a strip depicting the McGinnis family who struggle to keep up with the lifestyle of their neighbors.  Since its creation in 1913, Americans have been doing just that.  Our economy is driven by consumption.  Spending on goods and services represents roughly 70% of the nation’s output

While they are not duking it out like King Arthur and the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, President Donald Trump and Federal Open Market Committee Chair Jerome Powel appear to be at odds.  Both sides are searching for their own holy grail, and their paths keep crossing.

The Fourth of July is right around the corner, commemorating the birth of America with fireworks, Atlas looks forward to Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog-Eating Championship and the Twilight Zone Marathon.  Joey Chestnut will be competing this year after a sponsorship-related ban in 2024.  We’ve also just discovered that the Heroes & Icons Network (not sure if our house gets th

People like concrete explanations for phenomena.  For instance, virtually daily financial headlines are filled with reasons various markets behaved the way they did that day, up or down.  These explanations are more compelling to readers than something along the lines of  “buyers were more urgent than sellers today, so markets increased after the opposite was true yesterday

Welcome to Pi Day 2025.  Atlas likes to think of it as a day to reflect on cycles, acknowledging the good and bad times implicit in them.  Pie comes to mind.  At the peak of the pie cycle is the first bite.  The wholesome sweetness has hit your tastebuds, yet most of the pie is still intact.  Then there’s the bottom of the cycle, that point when you realize you at

Tariffs are essentially taxes imposed by a country on goods imported from abroad.  They serve multiple purposes: generating revenue for the government, protecting domestic industries from foreign competition, and sometimes as a tool in trade negotiations.  When a tariff is applied, it increases the cost of imported goods, making them less competitive against domestic products.