Stay Careful, There Are Many Black Swans Circling

There is a potential upside to the long, terrible winter. Almost everyone has cabin fever and will run out as soon as it gets warm in two weeks and start shopping, renovating, and doing other things. Construction will resume full force. In short, there is likely to be a major surge in economic activity in March which will lift all boats. This does not mean the economy will really improve a lot, or that employment will be on a new plateau higher. It simply will mean the economy and hiring will bump up, maybe a lot by April, but the underlying issues remain and are being compounded. Obamacare is still a disaster. Obama may have made some people believe it is all going to be OK by delaying the mandates so that the expected 50-80 million policy cancellations expected will not happen this year, but they will happen the next year unless the law is permanently changed. Part time labor will continue to increase as companies work to limit their exposure. The cost to the economy will still be very material. 

Raising the minimum wage is nice politics for low income and Latino workers, but it is not going to help the economy and may likely harm it as CBO predicts. Regulations, especially from EPA pour out, raising the cost of development. In New York, the DeBlasio administration seems hell bent to make the city back to the Dinkens days of higher crime, dysfunction, and harder to do business, and harder and more costly to do development of high end residential. The good news is the city has no authority over taxes and many other major items, and Cuomo and the Republicans in the State Senate will not allow much of what DeBlasio wants to do. The new Speaker of City Council is so far left, she actually makes DeBlasio seem almost centrist, so the real risk is city council will do whatever it can to implement far left rules and laws that will make development, and operations, much more difficult and costly.