Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Cover All Births And Modernize Maternity Care

Medicare For All? Start At The Beginning: Cover All Births And Modernize Maternity Care | Health Affairs It has been two years since I wrote on women’s healthcare and three important topics impacting women; clinical trials done without women participants, a failing birth control device – Essure, and maternal healthcare. The Health Affairs article is […]

Producer Prices Rises 0.8% in May

Producer Price Index YoY Records for Final Demand and Intermediate Services; 46 year High for Intermediate Goods, 48 year High for Raw Materials Commenter RJS and MarketWatch 666 blogger The seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 0.8% in April, as prices for finished wholesale goods rose 1.5% while margins of final services providers […]

Coronavirus dashboard for June 17: big progress since 1 year ago; big “Delta” challenge still ahead

Coronavirus dashboard for June 17: big progress since 1 year ago; big “Delta” challenge still ahead One year ago today, in my Coronavirus Dashboard for June 17, here was my graph of cases Which I described as: As shown in the graph above, [after Arizona at 214 per million population] the remaining “top 10” are all […]

Manchin on Voting Rights

The news is that Joe Manchin has described a voting rights compromise which he supports. Also Republicans immediately said it was unacceptable to them. This reminds everyone that there will be no bipartisan compromise on an issue where the two parties have diametrically opposite interests. If there were any Republicans who did not equate democrats […]

Bottom Line On The Biden-Putin Summit

Bottom Line On The Biden-Putin Summit  According to Robyn Dixon of the Washington Post on 6/18/21 regarding the outcome of the Buden-Putin summit in Geneva, I shall simply quote directly from what looks to be the bottom line from Putin himself: Despite a packed European tour schedule, Biden “looked fresh” and was “fully aware of […]

May housing permits and starts continue down from recent peak

May housing permits and starts continue down from recent peak In May housing permits (blue in the graph below), including the least volatile single-family permits (red, right scale), continued to decline from their January peak. Meanwhile, the more volatile and slightly lagging housing starts (green) increased, but remained below their March peak: The level of […]

The decline in new jobless claims stalls, as the “delta” variant is ready to strike the unvaccinated States

The decline in new jobless claims stalls, as the “delta” variant is ready to strike the unvaccinated States New jobless claims continue to be the most important weekly economic data point, as increasing numbers of vaccinated people and outdoor activities have led to an abatement of the pandemic, with both new infections and deaths at […]