Photo, left: Appomatox Courthouse, April 9, 1865.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; & Cumulus Media radio
Hour One
Tuesday  23 June 2015  / Hour 1, Block A: Bill Whalen, Hoover Institution, in re:  GOP responds to the Confederate Battle Flag:  Nikki Haley, South Carolina Governor, Calls for Removal of ...
 Gov. Nikki Haley's call to remove the flag from Capitol grounds came in the wake of the killing of nine people in a Charleston church.
  ;  Republicans respond.   States respond.Virginia responds
 Virginia's McAuliffe plans to phase out Confederate flag license plate
 Terry McAuliffe said Tuesday that he wants to phase out a state-
Bernie Sanders responds to Hillary Clinton.  Bernie Sanders (1 of 2)
Tuesday  23 June 2015  / Hour 1, Block B: Bill Whalen, Hoover Institution (2 of 2)
Tuesday  23 June 2015  / Hour 1, Block C: John Cochrane, Hoover Institution; in re: US durable goods dragged down by aircraft.  The 1.8% m/m fall in headline durable goods orders in May was largely due to a 35.3% m/m decline in the notoriously volatile commercial aircraft orders component. We already knew that Boeing reported orders for only 11 planes last month, nearly all of which were the cheapest 737s. None of these orders will be filled for several years, however, so they tell us nothing about the current strength of the economy. Excluding transportation, core orders increased by a more reassuring 0.5% m/m in May, although that gain only just reversed a 0.3% m/m decline in April.
Orders for non-defence capital goods (ex. aircraft) increased by 0.4% m/m. As a result, the three-month-on-three-month annualised growth rate improved, but only to -7.9%. Shipments in the same category increased by 0.3% m/m and the three-month-on-three-month annualised rate improved to -1.8%, from -6.0%. Shipments in this category, which are used to calculate equipment investment in the national accounts, have now increased for three months in a row. Accordingly, it appears that equipment investment did increase in the second quarter, but it was probably a pretty modest gain of around 5% annualised. The bottom line is that equipment investment is one of the few expenditure components that isn't showing signs of a marked rebound in the second quarter.
The big disappointment in this report was actually the 0.2% m/m decline in durables inventories. That suggests inventories will be a slightly bigger drag on second-quarter GDP growth than we had previously anticipated . . .
John Cochrane is an expert in monetary policy, financial economics, macroeconomics, inflation and deficits, financial regulation, and time series econometrics. He is currently a professor of finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. He is also a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research, and an adjunct scholar with the CATO Institute. Cochrane is the author of the book Asset Pricing, and was a coauthor of The Squam Lake Report. He maintains the Grumpy Economist blog. 
Tuesday  23 June 2015  / Hour 1, Block D: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; and Cumulus Media radio; in re: How the U.S. Can Return to 4% Growth - WSJ  In The Wall Street Journal, Glenn Hubbard and Kevin Warsh write about how the ... fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a lecturer at the Stanford .... more than to be emphatically deposited on history's junkyard of failed ideas. .... @Terry Traub Terry, can you define what "certain amount" is? 
On Dec. 9, 2009, for example, the Federal Reserve staff presented its “Long-Term Outlook” for economic growth to the Federal Open Market Committee. In the so-called Greenbook forecasts, Fed staff projected that real GDP would grow by 3.6% at an annual rate in 2010, increase to 4.5% in 2011, peak at 4.7% in 2012 and 2013, and then grow 3.2% in 2014. These kinds of growth rates were not without precedent, and the Fed’s forecasting record compares favorably with the Blue Chip forecasts of private forecasters.
But growth has been about one-half of the Fed’s projections. The country has experienced the weakest expansion since World War II. Participation in the labor force is near its lowest level since 1978. The country is in the midst of the worst five-year run for productivity ever measured outside of a recession. All the while, households and businesses with big balance sheets have been enriched by the superior performance of the stock market.
Hour Two
Tuesday  23 June 2015  / Hour 2, Block A: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin; in re:
Tuesday  23 June 2015  / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus & author:
Tuesday  23 June 2015  / Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus & author:
Tuesday  23 June 2015  / Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus & author:
Hour Three
Monday  22 June 2015  / Hour 3, Block A: Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans by Malcolm Gaskill, part II (1 of 4)
Monday  22 June 2015  / Hour 3, Block B: Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans by Malcolm Gaskill, part II (2 of 4)
Monday  22 June 2015  / Hour 3, Block C: Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans by Malcolm Gaskill, part II (3 of 4)
Monday  22 June 2015  / Hour 3, Block D: Between Two Worlds: How the English Became Americans by Malcolm Gaskill, part II (4 of 4)
Hour Four
Tuesday  23 June 2015  / Hour 4, Block A:   Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review & Pirates fan, in re: Dana Haswell Corbin had no idea she was bucking conventional political . . . and Bernie! link
Tuesday  23 June 2015  / Hour 4, Block B:   James Taranto, Wall Street Journal editorial board, in re: http://www.wsj.com/articles/let-her-lead-1435084389?tesla=y
Tuesday  23 June 2015  / Hour 4, Block C:  Charles Gasparino, Fox Business Channel, in re: Trump’s Running—But the Joke’s On You, However much it is, after he’s done with this so-called presidential campaign, he’s going to be worth a lot more. Donald Trump says he’s really rich—worth nearly $9 billion ($8,737,540,000 to be exact). Forbes estimates that he’s worth less than half that much.
Tuesday  23 June 2015  / Hour 4, Block D:   Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: Cool image time! The two images on the right, taken on June 18 and June 15 respectively — cropped from a larger collection — show Pluto’s two hemispheres, as best as New Horizons can at the moment resolve them.
While still as fuzzy as pre-space age planetary images, the pictures when compared with earlier images of the same hemispheres now clearly show several consistent features. Things can only get better. Stay tuned.
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