The Final Numbers Are in: Biden's Presidency Had Best Job Numbers on Record

Biden's presidency is over. He promised to prioritize jobs.

And he delivered.

His term saw the lowest average unemployment rate and the highest rate of job creation of any president since FDR.

By one key measure - the drop in unemployment from his first to last month in office - only Obama and Clinton oversaw a bigger decline. (Americans tend to elect Democrats to fix broken economies, their first job always seeming to be getting the car out of the garage and back onto the road.)

No other president in your lifetime has posted - or will post - better numbers.

Trade & Stephen Covey’s 3 Habits for Strong Relationships

Stephen Covey’s three key habits for building strong relationships are:
1. Think Win-Win
2. Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
3. Synergize

Here’s how they work in practice:
• You approach others—whether people or organizations—believing there’s a way for both of you to win.
• You listen first, understanding what a win looks like for them before sharing what a win looks like for you.
• Then, you synergize, finding or creating an outcome where both sides win—maybe even more than expected.

Some people don’t think this way—but that’s their loss.
Win-win thinking requires assertiveness—you have to let others know what a win looks like for you. That takes courage. The courage to stand up for yourself.
But it also requires consideration—you have to listen. Seek first to understand means respecting the other person enough to hear what matters to them.

This is where relationships can break down.
• Sometimes, you’ll realize there’s no real overlap in what a “win” means for both of you.
• But even when there is overlap, synergizing means getting creative—maybe you find a compromise, maybe they do, maybe you arrive at a solution neither of you thought of before you engaged in conversation.

And if you can’t? That’s okay too. With 8 billion people in the world, you don’t have to force yourself into relationships that can only survive if one of you loses. Instead, find, create, and insist on win-win relationships.

Of course, any normal relationship will include some win-lose exchanges—that’s life. The point is:
• Don’t be the person who insists every relationship must be win-lose—where the other person is always subordinate to you.
• And don’t be the person who always loses. Standing up for your own goals and desires isn’t selfish—it’s essential.

Why This Matters Beyond Personal Relationships
I bring this up for two reasons:
1. It’s just great advice. Covey nailed something fundamental, and it’s worth sharing.
2. It applies beyond personal relationships—especially in trade and economics.

Empires treat their colonies as win-lose. Or at best win, not caring so much whether the colony wins or loses. They extract resources and wealth, ensuring the empire wins while the colony is largely left to fend for itself.

But trade between independent nations – trade in a post imperialistic, post-colonial world - is expected to be different. Nations, businesses, and individuals trade because both sides benefit. Business and economics lend themselves to the win-win dynamic.

Trade wars are fought by people who get none of this. Wars are win-lose. Trade should be win-win. To make it a trade war is to ignore whether you’re making progress and instead just focusing on whether you’re doing better than them.

People with a reptilian mindset still see trade as win-lose—as if crushing the other side is the goal. But we have better options. We can think bigger. Both sides can thrive and prosper and their win can actually enhance yours. Would you rather trade with a country that was prosperous and creative or one that had only mud to harvest and sell? Everyone should aspire to have a prosperous trading partner. Even if you have no normal empathy for the condition of others, prosperous trading partners could benefit you simply because they will pay more for your stuff and have cool stuff to sell to you. And that's win-win.

Donald and the Confederates: Foes of the 14th Amendment

Raise your hand if you’re surprised that Trump thinks he can rewrite the Constitution with a memo.

This week, Trump attempted to overturn the 14th Amendment with an executive order. The last people to oppose the 14th Amendment so openly? The Confederates.

The 13th Amendment ended slavery. But it quickly became clear that the former Confederates were intent on treating freed slaves as second-class citizens, denying them basic rights. For instance, even former slaves who had lived and worked in the United States for generations were barred from voting because they were deemed "the wrong sort of people." For the confederates, it didn't matter if you were born here if you were born to the wrong kind of woman. Race and ancestry mattered.

In response, the Republicans drafted and passed the 14th Amendment to guarantee birthright citizenship, ensuring that former slaveowners could not deny citizenship to freed slaves by claiming they were "lesser people." One of the most beautiful principles this country has embraced is that you don’t need to prove you were born to “the right people” to be a citizen—you simply have to be born here. The 14th Amendment fundamentally redefined citizenship, basing it on place of birth, not race, ancestry, or property ownership.

The 14th Amendment did even more—for example, it redefined representation in the House by counting all people in a state’s population. But its core principle was the realization of an ideal penned by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: All men are created equal.

Donald Trump now holds the record as the oldest president ever sworn into office

Donald Trump now holds the record as the oldest president ever sworn into office. The Constitution specifies that one must be at least 35 years old to be president, but there is no upper age limit.

Donald Trump is older than Bill Clinton. Nonetheless, a person born during Bill Clinton's presidency would be old enough to serve as president by the end of Donald Trump's term. Clinton was first sworn into office 32 years ago.

Donald Trump was 14 when JFK was sworn into office in 1961. JFK has now been gone for more than 61 years.

George W. Bush was born 22 days after Trump, and Bill Clinton was born 44 days after Bush. All three were born within a year of Japan’s surrender. Rumor has it that someday baby boomers will die out, but there is, as yet, no evidence of this.

William Henry Harrison died just 31 days into his term. It took voters 140 years to summon the courage to elect another president (Reagan) older than Harrison. This decade, voters have shown no hesitation when it comes to electing the elderly.

The Alarming Math of Financing Retirement in a World With a Shrinking Population

The population explosion of the last century is poised to dramatically reverse in this century, and the consequences will be profound. One of the biggest? Financing retirement.

When FDR and Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins introduced Social Security in 1935, the math seemed almost too good to be true. By 1940, when monthly benefits began, there were nearly 160 workers for every retiree. To put that in perspective, if each worker donated just one hour of their monthly wages, it could fully fund a retirement income equal to the national average for every retiree in the country. Social Security wasn’t just a safety net—it was a hammock supported by a workforce the size of an army.

But by 1960, the ratio had dropped to just 5.1 workers per beneficiary. Fast forward to the program’s 100th anniversary in 2035, and we’re looking at a projected ratio of just 2 workers per retiree. Do the math: in this scenario, each worker would need to fork over nearly 80 hours of their pay—or about half of their monthly income—just to keep retirees afloat at the national average. That’s not a hammock; it’s a fiscal tightrope.

Faced with this reality, it’s hard not to root for a cavalry of saviors: immigrants, robots, AI, and grandchildren. So, let’s join hands across ideological lines. Team up with your conservative friends who champion family values and want more babies. Link arms with your globalist pals who advocate for more immigrants. High-five your tech-bro buddies banking on robots and AI to lighten the load. Cheer for all of these and all of them and all of us who aspire to enjoying retirement.

Or, if none of that sounds appealing, there’s always the option of redefining retirement as a couple of glorious weeks instead of a couple of decades. You know, like a vacation. Your call.

Reviewing Economic Forecast from One Year Ago and New Forecast for 2025 and 2026

2024 Forecast Recap (Posted 1/1/2024):
- Prediction: Unemployment would rise above 4%, possibly with one quarter of job losses.
- Prediction: Stock prices would rise along with unemployment, potentially dramatically.

What Actually Happened?
- Unemployment did rise above 4%, reaching 4.2% in November, up from 3.7% at the start of the year.
- Jobs: Despite higher unemployment, there was no month—let alone a quarter—of net job losses. The lowest job growth came in August, with fewer than 100,000 jobs added, the weakest since 2020.
- Stock Market: The NASDAQ soared, finishing the year up over 28%, fulfilling the prediction of a dramatic rise.

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Forecast for 2025 and 2026:
The outlook depends entirely on whether the Republican-controlled Congress follows Trump’s policies of mass deportations and significant tariffs. If they do:
- Scenario: Deportations Exceeding 10 Million & Tariffs of 20–40%
1. Recession:
- The economy will contract for more than two quarters and shrink by over 2%, marking only the second recession since the Great Recession.
2. Inflation:
- Inflation will spike above 5%, driven by:
- Higher costs for goods due to tariffs.
- Domestic producers raising prices under tariff protection.
3. Stock Market:
- The market will decline by at least 5–10% as higher costs and retaliatory tariffs erode profits for U.S. companies facing supply chain disruptions and weaker sales.
4. Policy Response:
- Trump: Will remain oblivious to - but angry about - the economic consequences, offering no substantive explanation or course correction.
- Republicans in Congress: Some may recognize the damage and attempt to reverse these policies, though resistance within the party is likely.
- MAGA Supporters: Will reject economic reality, blaming the failure on conspiracies rather than the inanity of the policies themselves.
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In Summary:
The economic trajectory for 2025 and 2026 hinges on whether Congress pursues policies that disrupt trade and labor markets. Sensible governance could avoid these pitfalls, but blind adherence to MAGA ideology will trigger self-inflicted economic wounds. We can only hope that Trump stays focused on crafting tweets rather than legislation.

Warnings from the 1920s: the KKK, Tariffs, and the Devolution of Trade Wars into a World War

In 1925, the Ku Klux Klan marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., in a demonstration the Washington Post called "one of the greatest demonstrations this city has ever known." Estimates of participants ranged from 30,000 to 60,000. The marchers protested what they saw as foreign threats to their way of life: immigrants and imported goods they claimed were polluting their country.

The 1920s were marked by economic growth. GDP rose steadily, and the stock market climbed—first at a steady pace, then spectacularly in the latter half of the decade. Yet, many Americans remained angry, convinced that their struggles stemmed from “them”: immigrants and foreign producers. Feeding this resentment was a new form of media—radio.

In 1923, only about 1% of American households owned a radio. By 1931, more than half did. This rapid adoption made radio a powerful tool for spreading fear and fueling the resurgence of extremist groups like the KKK. Voices on the airwaves amplified suspicions of "outsiders," heightening nativist and isolationist sentiment.

Politicians responded. In 1924, a year before the KKK marched in D.C., Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act). The law slashed immigration quotas to 2% of each nationality based on the 1890 census—a deliberate choice to limit newcomers from Southern and Eastern Europe. It also effectively banned immigration from Asia. On the economic front, a series of tariff bills raised barriers to foreign imports. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 escalated this trend, imposing duties of 40-48% on over 20,000 imported goods. Despite warnings from over 1,000 economists and 24 foreign nations, President Hoover signed the bill, triggering retaliatory tariffs that further strangled global trade.
By the time the Great Depression hit, Hoover presided over an economy in freefall. Unemployment soared to 25%, and GDP was cut in half. Meanwhile, Europe—still reeling from the devastation of World War I—sank deeper into economic and political chaos. Chronic unemployment and inflation gave rise to extremist movements, most notably in Germany. The Great Depression brought Hitler and FDR to power within five weeks of each other in early 1933.

The protectionist sentiment of the 1920s wasn’t limited to the U.S. or Europe. Across the globe, nations turned inward. Japan, angered by a Chinese boycott of its goods, attacked Shanghai in 1932. For the first time on a large scale, bombs rained down on civilians, setting the stage for the Pacific theater of World War II. This chain of events culminated in Japan bombing Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entering a global conflict that would claim over 100 million lives.

How did the U.S. transform the Roaring Twenties into the Great Depression and World War II? In part, by turning fear of others into policy. Efforts to isolate the U.S. from the world—through immigration restrictions and protectionist tariffs—did not insulate the country. Instead, they contributed to a collapse of global trade that turned the exchange of goods into the exchange of bads: insults, bombs, and bullets. Modern nations will almost inevitably trade. The only question is whether they will trade goods—products, people, investments, and services—or bads—conflict, poverty, and obstacles to prosperity.

A century later, we can still draw lessons from the 1920s.

The Performance of Job and Stock Markets Through 48 Years and 8 Presidencies

Here is data for the last 48 years on labor and capital markets.

The stock market performance (orange line) represents the average annual return of the three major indices (Dow, NASDAQ, and S&P 500). The timeframe runs from the day after each presidential election to the day the next president is declared the winner.

The job number reflects the average monthly employment figure reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) during each president's full term, from their first to last complete month in office.
There are many factors outside a president's control—and many within it. For instance, the Great Recession that tanked George W. Bush’s economic numbers was largely a consequence of policies championed during his presidency. Bush’s administration embraced financial deregulation, undoing safeguards put in place after the Great Depression. These included the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and looser oversight of financial derivatives. The ensuing financial crisis was not mere coincidence but evidence that, as in sports, financial markets thrive best when they strike a balance between free competition and effective regulation. Bush’s poor stock market and job performance stemmed from these flawed policies.

Luck matters too. For example, Donald Trump faced the worst pandemic in a century, which disrupted the economy and labor markets worldwide. However, governance also plays a role. Trump refused to coordinate a national COVID-19 response, leaving states to act independently. In his final month in office, his focus was not on the pandemic but on contesting the results of the 2020 election, culminating in a riot at the Capitol. Meanwhile, COVID-19 deaths reached staggering levels, averaging 3,000 deaths per day—equivalent to a 9/11 attack every 24 hours.

Joe Biden inherited these challenges but immediately launched a coordinated national COVID-19 response. His administration passed a sweeping recovery bill to support job creation and stabilize the economy. This proactive approach likely prevented the sharp contraction or sluggish recovery that could have occurred under a laissez-faire approach, akin to the post-Great Recession recovery during Obama’s presidency. At that time, Congress pressured Obama into austerity measures that prioritized deficit reduction over aggressive job creation, resulting in years of depressed employment growth.

The takeaway? Demographics, pandemics, and policy all play roles in shaping labor and capital markets. Like in bull riding, the difficulty of the circumstances ("the bull") matters as much as the skill of the president ("the rider"). Strong governance can make all the difference between a sharp fall and a smooth landing.

The 14th Amendment As an Obstacle to Trump's Policies

Today Trump stated that he was going to end birthright citizenship - something granted by the 14th amendment.

The 14th Amendment was created after Republicans recognized that Southern Democrats were freeing slaves but denying them citizenship based on race. This amendment redefined citizenship, making it about more than bloodlines or tribal affiliations—it became a shared commitment to ideals and opportunities. It stands as one of the most fascinating experiments in the broader sweep of American innovation, defining the nation as something profoundly different from what had come before. Here was identity rooted in shared ideals, not shared ancestry—a nation striving for equal opportunity, despite its diverse histories and conditions.

The 13th Amendment ended slavery. The 14th Amendment completed the transformation by granting citizenship, guaranteeing it through the simple fact of being born in this country. To ignore the 14th Amendment and deny citizenship to those born here is to abandon the principle that defines America. It reduces citizenship to ancestry rather than potential, binding people to their parents’ past rather than opening the door to their own future.

Unsurprisingly, Trump and the MAGA boys who are fascinated by race, heritage and genes find the 14th amendment an obstacle to his policy. We fought a civil war to put up that obstacle. He thinks he can remove it with an executive order.

The Invention of Psychology Predated the Invention of Macroeconomics

What I can tell you: Sell your stock at the market’s peak and buy when it hits bottom.
What I can’t tell you: When the market is at its peak or when it’s hit bottom.

Finance and economics exist at the intersection of hard facts and human behavior—the interplay between mathematical calculations and animal spirits. In retrospect, it seemed inevitable that William James and Sigmund Freud would invent modern psychology before John Maynard Keynes invented macroeconomics. Human psychology is as influential as industrial capital in shaping economies and markets, driven in part by the power of mood and in part by analysts making precise calculations with inherently speculative numbers.

A Long Walk and a Moonwalk - Armstrong and Aldrin's & Lewis and Clark's Journey's To Define America

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (A&A) traveled to the Moon in 1969.
Lewis and Clark (L&C) explored the American frontier, reaching Oregon and returning, from 1804 to 1806.
Here are some intriguing comparisons between their historic journeys.
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Top Speed:
• L&C: ~3 mph (on foot, horseback, and by boat).
• A&A: ~25,000 mph (during re-entry to Earth's atmosphere).

Total Distance Traveled:
• L&C: ~8,000 miles (round trip).
• A&A: ~478,000 miles (round trip).

Support Crew:
• L&C: 33 members in the Corps of Discovery.
• A&A: Over 400,000 NASA employees and contractors supported the mission.

Length of the Journey:
• L&C: 2 years, 4 months, and 8 days.
• A&A: 8 days.

Communication
• L&C were out of contact with Washington, D.C., for their entire journey (~2.5 years).
• A&A maintained near-continuous communication with NASA Mission Control, with brief blackouts during lunar orbit.

Languages Encountered:
• L&C: In addition to English and French, they encountered ~50 Native American tribes, each with their own language or dialect.
• A&A: In addition to English, they navigated the specialized "dialects" of engineering, computer science, and flight operations.

Legacy:
• L&C: Lewis & Clark’s expedition led to westward expansion and the transformation and settlement of the American frontier, changing the lives of millions of Americans who have turned a former frontier into home.
• A&A: Armstrong and Aldrin’s mission pioneered a different kind of frontier—one settled not by homesteaders but by computer scientists, entrepreneurs, communication satellites, and new technologies. Their journey was a catalyst for the creation of new industries, companies, wealth, products, and technologies, transforming the lives of people around the globe. Like the Apollo team, people today communicate almost instantly across vast distances, connecting through spaces as immense as the surface of the Earth that was first seen as a whole on a NASA mission and now is increasingly treated as one globe in daily communication, trade, development and finance.