So between their initial projections in March 2017, and their current projections in July 2018, this year's budget deficit increased by more than 100%.

...

Last March, they projected a total budget deficit of $526 billion for Fiscal Year 2019.

But according to the revised projections they published yesterday, the budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2019 will now be $1.085 TRILLION... 106% worse than projected.

And, whereas last year the government was forecasting DECLINING deficits in Fiscal Years 2020, 2021, etc., until miraculously reaching a positive budget SURPLUS of +16 billion in 2026, their updated projections now show TRILLION DOLLAR DEFICITS next year. And the year after that. And the year after that. Etc.

It's Trumponomics! What did we expect from a guy who's been bankrupt a gazillion times?

Instead, Best Buy has become an improbable survivor led by an unlikely boss. Joly was raised and educated in France, trained at McKinsey & Co., and previously employed by hospitality company Carlson, based outside Minneapolis, and media conglomerate Vivendi SA, where he greenlighted a little game called World of Warcraft. He's the first outside CEO in the chain's 52-year history. He had no retail experience--Best Buy's stock fell 10 percent the day he was named CEO--but Joly understands how to value, and capture, customers' time. Comparable sales rose 5.6 percent last year and 9 percent during the Christmas season, the biggest holiday gain since 2003. The stock price has quadrupled. Even Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is impressed. "The last five years, since Hubert came to Best Buy, have been remarkable," he said at an appearance in April.

Those years were about getting people into Best Buy stores and onto its website; Best Buy's future will be about getting its people into homes.

...

There is, of course, one thing Best Buy has that Amazon doesn't: more than 1,000 big-box stores. Joly saw the benefit of using them as showrooms--a word so fraught in retail that the company calls them showcases--for the big tech brands, Amazon included. Best Buy was among the first chains to feature Apple boutiques. In April 2013, Joly said there would be Samsung mini-shops in its 1,400 U.S. locations by June. That same month, Best Buy began adding 600 Microsoft stores-within-stores. Sony arrived in 2014. Last year, Best Buy turned over more space to Amazon and Google to better display their smart home technologies. The two are bitter rivals: Amazon doesn't sell Google Home and offers a limited selection of Google's Nest products. Best Buy is neutral ground.

The brands essentially pay rent to Best Buy (it's cheaper than building stores) and either send in their own salespeople or train the blue shirts. No one at Best Buy would offer details about these partnerships. But even analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities Inc., who in almost 10 years has never recommended buying Best Buy's stock, describes the partnerships as a phenomenal success because they ease the financial burden of operating stores while enhancing profit margins. "Best Buy is like an arms dealer," he says. "They're indifferent to what brand you buy as long as you buy it from them."

"I'm not thrilled" the Fed is raising borrowing costs and potentially slowing the economy, he said in an interview with CNBC broadcast Thursday. "Because we go up and every time you go up they want to raise rates again. I don't really -- I am not happy about it. But at the same time I'm letting them do what they feel is best."

So much for "sound money Trump" (which was only ever a tiny bit of misdirection, frankly)...

...

Yet the researchers also found that even among white households that are married, with children, and even with substantial income, the homeownership rate is 2 to 3 percentage points lower than earlier generations.  Obviously other factors are at play, some of them defined as attitudinal.

The preference of educated Millennials to move to more expensive urban centers has contributed to their lower homeownership rate.  In high-cost cities the housing supply is inelastic and within large metro areas, Young adults additionally migrate to the counties with a more urban environment where prices have increased more than in surrounding areas.  This shift in preference was mostly observed among those who are higher educated. The supply of affordable housing has declined overall during the last decade, but this is especially true in areas where Millennials prefer to live.

...

Obtaining a mortgage has become more challenging over the last ten years. The process is unwieldy, and underwriting has not adapted to the unstable and non-traditional labor market and tightening credit standards.

...

Although Google offers the open source mobile software for free, the EU takes issue with the requirements placed on manufacturers to pre-install Google's search and Chrome browser apps if they want to license the Play app store. Google actually ties Play to a suite of 11 different apps, including Maps, Gmail and Docs, but the only ones that the EU has called for it to separate from Play are Chrome and Search.

The EU also says that it's illegal for Google to pay manufacturers and carriers to exclusively pre-install Google's search app on phones, which it says it did between 2011 and 2014, and to use so-called anti-fragmentation agreements to prevent phone makers from selling modified versions of Android.

...

"So far, the Android business model has meant that we haven't had to charge phone makers for our technology, or depend on a tightly controlled distribution model," Pichai wrote.

...

Bond-buying by central bankers, commonly referred to as Quantitative Easing (QE), has become so ingrained in current thinking that it is now in the Fed's conventional toolkit-- a tool once reserved for a depression or financial crisis is now to be used at the first inkling of the next recession.

... it is most surprising that forty years after wage and price controls were sadly rejected by every economic textbook and policymakers, today we have settled to allowing the most important price of all, long-term interest rates, to be regularly distorted by [the central bank.]

"Overall, we see the risk of the economy unexpectedly weakening as roughly balanced with the possibility of the economy growing faster than we currently anticipate," Powell said.

"The unemployment rate is low and expected to fall further. Americans who want jobs have a good chance of finding them," he added.

...

However, the "upbeat tone" from the testimony likely means the trade issues won't keep the Fed from hiking rates, said Andrew Hunter, U.S. economist at Capital Economics.

...

In addition to Vicecroy's mounting expenses, the Manhattan hotel market is in a radically different place. The borough saw a slump in RevPAR -- or revenue per available room -- and pricing power, but there appears to be turning around in recent months.

Because these companies are so large, politicians hope that if the initial project works out, even more jobs may be created either by the large tech company or by smaller companies that follow it to the new locale. Attracting big companies helps politicians show voters they've been effective and should be reelected -- they created jobs! -- but they can also serve the ideological position of the politician. Republicans can view handing corporations huge sums of public money as forwarding their goal to slash government to the bone.

Good Jobs First, a national policy resource center, estimates that major tech companies have received $9.3 billion in subsidies and incentives to build data centers and warehouses across the United States over the past five years. These companies are already massively profitable and some of the incentives amount to hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars per job created -- an amount that obviously will not pay off in the long run, especially when another state can just hand them a check to move when the benefit wears off.

Though Apple has an estimated $285 billion in cash reserves, it still looks for subsidies when opening new facilities. The company was awarded $213 million to open a data center in Waukee, Iowa in 2017, even though it would only create 50 jobs at a price tag of $4.3 million per job created, making it almost impossible to see how those incentives would ever be recovered.

Similarly, when officials in Nevada awarded Tesla a tax incentive of $1.25 billion to win its Gigafactory, watchdogs warned that it would starve the state of funding for public services. Now, years later, with the incentive expected to be closer to $1.4 billion, that's exactly what happened. Since the factory isn't contributing to the budget, there isn't money to increase funding to police and fire services, which are feeling the strain of population growth. Schools are also overcrowded and bus routes for students are being cut, while those suffering from increased prices talk of being "Tesla'd."

... [So how has the market stayed levitated?] Speculative fever among institutional investors and hedge funds has heated up. They have increased their borrowings in an effort to chase an overheated market higher. The increased use of leverage has only increased risk.

...

China has vowed to "strike back hard, and launch comprehensive measures that match the U.S. move in quantity and quality." This means China could introduce more tariffs. It could also further devalue its currency to stay "competitive," which would encourage Trump to introduce even more tariffs.

In short, everyday goods could soon get a lot more expensive. And that's the last thing working-class Americans can afford... [And now] inflation is already creeping higher... We can see this in the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a broad measure of inflation. It's rising at its fastest pace since 2012.

The Producer Price Index (PPI), another popular measure of inflation, is also climbing fast. In fact, it just had the biggest yearly jump in nearly seven years.

...

If the trade war escalates, other companies will have no choice but to [pass prices along to consumers]... And that could take a huge toll on consumer spending, which is by far the biggest segment of the U.S. economy.

"The broad-based weakness of Wells Fargo's results is troubling, with many indicators such as deposits, commercial and consumer lending trending down. It appears that the slew of scandals that Wells Fargo has been involved in are taking their toll," said Octavio Marenzi, CEO of capital markets management consulting firm Opimas. "Compared to JPMorgan's excellent results earlier today, Wells Fargo is looking rather hapless, unable to get it right."

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Shares of Wells Fargo are down more than 10 percent this year.

Wells said it had state income tax charges of $481 million, related to a recent Supreme Court ruling regarding e-commerce sales (South Dakota v. Wayfair) that said states can charge taxes on purchases from out-of-state sellers even if the seller isn't located in that state.