Blog Archives - Jay Evensen

How to measure the economy in a government shutdown

10/29/2025

On a recent Friday night, my wife and I were surprised to be seated immediately at our favorite Mexican restaurant. We have become used to at least a 30-minute wait on weekends.
We wondered, is this a sign of a pending recession?
Don’t laugh. That’s as good a question as any other out there. It may or may not be more reliable than the Hamburger Helper index.
Such is economic forecasting at a time when the government is shut down and the Bureau of Labor Statistics either is no longer publishing or is delaying key economic reports.
Hamburger helper, you say?

How to predict the future with certainty

10/29/2025

For those who predict the distant future, there are two traps to avoid.
One is to assume human nature will change dramatically and that people will abandon things embedded in their souls, such as patriotism or the desire to succeed financially.
The other is the temptation of projecting today’s fashionable concerns onto the future.
As an added warning, those two traps tend to collide easily and often, which is why predicting the future is a fool’s errand most of the time.
But not always.

U.S. debt just flew past another big threshold

10/29/2025

Don’t look now, but the national debt just blew past $38 trillion, in what the Associated Press is calling “the fastest accumulation of a trillion dollars in debt outside of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The actual debt held by public investors is about $30.4 trillion and the rest is in intergovernmental holdings.
But that’s getting into the weeds, which may be why so much of the public seems to be caught in a perpetual yawn.

The NBA has a huge credibility problem to deal with

10/29/2025

The most absurd statement in an otherwise credible news conference Thursday about the arrests of professional athletes accused of illegal gambling was this: The nation’s legal sports gambling enterprises are among the victims.
Sure, no one is accusing these of any involvement in the two major cases announced at a press conference: One involving people accused of being part of an insider conspiracy concerning NBA games; and the other involving many more people, including former professional athletes and mobsters, in high-stakes poker games that allegedly were rigged.

If World War III starts, how will we know?

10/14/2025

In a recent meeting with the Deseret News editorial board, Aaron Starks, the chief executive officer of Utah’s own 47G, provided a troubling picture of world affairs.
“We tend to think of defense as hardware,” he said, noting this is no longer accurate. “We may never live in a day where Russian artillery rolls onto U.S. soil, but we go to war via our cyber networks every day of the week.”

Sports gambling scandals keep multiplying

10/9/2025

How many gambling scandals would it take for regular fans to begin doubting the outcome of sporting events? Let’s hope we don’t find out, but the news lately has not been good.
Sports Illustrated reported earlier this month that the NCAA is investigating 13 former players from six different schools — Eastern Michigan, Temple, Arizona State, New Orleans, North Carolina A&T and Mississippi Valley State.
A press release from the NCAA said the allegations involve student players betting either on or against their own teams, providing information to third-party gamblers, deliberately manipulating scores or outcomes and/or “refusing to participate in the enforcement staff's investigation.” The facts vary in each case.

What the U.S. can learn from Bangladesh

10/6/2025

NEW YORK CITY — Muhammad Yunus — Nobel Laureate, interim leader of Bangladesh and friend to Utah — surprised many when he came here last week to speak to the United Nations General Assembly accompanied by the leaders of three rival political parties.
But the unnatural grouping — perhaps jarring, by American standards — seemed to be paying dividends.
It also held some lessons for a hyper-partisan United States.

Government shutdowns never accomplish anything

10/6/2025

No matter how often Congress decides to let the government shut down, the outcome is always the same – more debt.
It’s not a direct cause-and-effect. Perhaps I should phrase it this way: The outcome is never less debt, which is exactly what the nation needs.
Several years ago,at the start of the shutdown of 2013, I wrote, “We may learn soon that we don’t need as much government as we think we do. But we eventually will learn that we need one that pays its bills and quits running up debt like a college kid with a credit card and a yen for pizza parties.”

weebly statistics

weebly reliable statistics

weebly statistics