1. Chart of the Day I (above) shows the narrative-destabilizing labor market reality that according to BLS data (here and here) Asian women out-earned white men in six of the last nine quarters. For the most recent quarter (2021:Q3), Asian women earned 9.1% (and $102) more per week than white men. How to explain this gender earnings gap favoring Asian women? Gender discrimination and male privilege are always the “go-to” explanations for any gender earnings gap favoring men, so perhaps there’s discrimination in the labor market against white men in favor of Asian women? And when there are white-black earnings gaps that favor whites, we often hear that “white privilege” is the reason, so perhaps “Asian privilege” is a factor in the labor market especially because it’s also true that Asian men out-earn white men.
2. Chart of the Day II (above) shows the declining search interest over time on Google for the term “peak oil.” Remember that misguided obsession in the days before hydraulic fracking and especially horizontal drilling revolutionized US oil production starting about 2009 and reversed a thirty-year decline in output in only ten years on the way to making the US the world’s No. 1 crude oil producer? Peak what?
3. Chart of the Day III (above) shows why we’re experiencing the highest inflation in 30 years and why it might not be “transient.” Since 1981, the Federal Reserve has increased M2 by about $19.5 trillion. If we divide that M2 growth into three periods when $6.5 trillion of new M2 was created, it took 336 months between January 1981 to December 2008 to create the first $6.5T, then 127 months from January 2009 to July 2019 to create the next $6.5T of new M2, and then only 27 months from August 2019 to October 2021 to create the last colossal, eye-popping addition of $6,500,000,000,000 in new M2! For another graphic that helps to understand just how much money (M2) has been created in less than two years, check out this stunning FRED chart.
4. Chart of the Day IV (above) displays some market-based evidence of the California-to-Texas exodus that has been taking place in recent years. Demand is so high for one-way 26-foot U-Haul trucks (and supply is so low) from San Francisco to Dallas relative for the low demand for one-way trucks in the opposite direction that it costs 8.3 times more for San Francisco-Dallas ($7,054) than for Dallas-San Francisco (only $854). The $854 cost for a 26-foot truck from Dallas to San Francisco in mid-December is actually less than the cost of a one-way rental for an SUV from Enterprise of $918. The difference in one-way U-Haul truck rental rates between a pair of US cities is a great example of market forces (supply and demand) in action. High Demand + Low Supply = High Price and Low Demand + High Supply = Low Price.
5. Chart of the Day V (above) shows that for more than a century from 1800 to 1913 prices in the US were relatively stable based on Federal Reserve data. But since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, its monetary policies increased the CPI by 27.5X, decreasing the value of the US dollar by more than 96% in the process.
6. Chart of the Day VI (above) shows another look at how the value of the US dollar has decreased over time since the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913.
7. Venn Diagram of the Day (above) on the inconsistency among some about their concern for state borders vs. national borders.
8. Chart of the Day VII (above) illustrates the signficant difference between how economists view changes in oil prices over time vs. how politicians and non-economists view oil prices.
9. Chart of the Day VIII (above) displays an important, but frequently overlooked downward trend in US CO2 emissions that started in 2007 and brought emissions to the lowest level last year since 1983. For that dramatic drop in CO2 emissions to a 37-year low, we can thank hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling which facilitated the increasing substitution of clean natural gas for coal as the main fuel source for the nation’s electric power.
10. Chart of the Day IX (above) is also an important, but frequently overlooked energy fact — the US leads the world in the reduction of CO2 over the most recent decade (2010-2020) for which data are available. As above, for that “greening” of America, we can thank the revolutionary technologies of fracking and horizontal drilling, which have accessed oceans of previously inaccessible natural gas beneath the ground in US states like Pennslyvania, Texas, Louisiana and Alaska. Ten years ago coal was the fuel source for 42% of America’s electricity while natural gas provided only 24.7%. Last year, natural gas provided 40.5% of the nation’s electricity compared to coal’s share of less than 20%.
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