Like everyone else, I have been affected by the terror attacks of the past couple of decades. I mourned those killed in 9/11, cried for the Sandy Hook children, and sat appalled at Oklahoma City, but the Boston attacks have hit home the hardest, literally. I have never been to Oklahoma City, never lived in New York, so as much as it hurt, it was abstract—removed.

Not this time. My wife and son easily could have been at the finish line for the Boston Marathon. They were at home, working in the back yard, but they could have been there. I have friends who work in that area and had gone down to see the race. I haven’t heard that any of them were injured, but it could have happened.

Several times over the past couple of months, I’ve mentioned that, while we certainly have an unemployment problem now, changing demographics will mean that the U.S., along with most of the developed countries (and China!), will eventually have a labor shortage. Hard to believe, I know, but then again, in 2005, most people didn’t believe that the housing market could ever go down.

I’ve also noted many times that part of the declining unemployment rate may be due to older workers retiring (to put it at its most favorable) or simply giving up on the labor market. As workers get older, a trend that is continuing, eventually they’ll simply drop out of the labor force in one way or another.

The economic stats just keep bouncing around. Although no single statistic is worth getting too excited over, the general trend of the data is pretty indicative, and what we are seeing is a decline in growth after the strong first quarter.

We will be hearing quite a bit about the Chained Consumer Price Index (chained CPI) over the next couple days, though most of the details don’t matter. It’s the first of two major takeaways from the president’s proposed budget.

For the sake of completeness, here’s the definition of chained CPI. What matters for the average citizen, however, is one thing: chained CPI increases more slowly than the inflation measures that are currently used, the CPI-U (the CPI for All Urban Workers) and CPI-W (the CPI for All Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers). By shifting the measure used, payments for social security will increase more slowly over time.

I love alliteration. A game my family plays on long car trips is to see how many words starting with the same letter we can string together and still make sense. I hold the record so far with something like Cape Cod Canal Commission Community College Cheerleading Co-Captain’s Conference Center classroom chatter, or CCCCCCCCCCCcc. Top that!

The topic for today, however, is the budget battle. We now have three budgets out there—the Senate Democrats’, the House Republicans’, and the President’s. While none of them will be passed as presented, we can reasonably define the box that the final budget will fit in. I plan to do a detailed analysis and comparison in the next couple of days.

“Margaret Thatcher RIP,” I tweeted yesterday, but in retrospect, that’s probably the least likely outcome. Wherever she ends up, peace is the last thing I would expect. If heaven, she’ll be offering God suggestions for how to run the world better; if hell, she’ll be planning a revolt. Love her or hate her, there’s no doubt that Margaret Thatcher changed Britain and, to a much lesser extent, the world.

I say “to a much lesser extent” because, as the current European situation plays out, it is becoming increasingly apparent that we’re reaching a Thatcherite breakpoint. To paraphrase one of my favorite quotes of hers, the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money. Europe, especially the periphery, is now at that point.

Unsurprisingly, last week’s disappointing employment results have generated quite a bit of discussion. The most interesting part for me has been a quantitative finding from Ned Davis Research: if you compute the actual hours worked, given the number of jobs and the increase in the average work week, it’s the equivalent of another 328,000 jobs added. Therefore, the aggregate hours worked—the actual labor input into the economy—actually rose 0.3 percent rather than declining, and the increase is pretty strong, above the 12-month average.

As I mentioned the other day, the past couple of years have seen a slowdown from a strong first quarter to a weaker second quarter, and it seems like this year will be no exception.

This morning’s employment reports were a serious disappointment. Job growth dropped across the board, with an increase of 88,000 in nonfarm payrolls—down from 268,000 in February and less than half the expected 190,000. Although the decline was partially offset by upward revisions in the previous months, there’s no denying this is a significant letdown. Adding to the bad news was a slowing in wage growth, from 2.1 percent to 1.8 percent on an annual basis, with wages staying flat month to month.

U.S. stock markets continue a bull run

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