August retail sales rebound slightly, argue for continued strong jobs growth in autumn Let’s take a look at retail sales, which are perhaps my favorite monthly economic indicator, since they tell us so much about average consumer behavior, and are also a good short leading indicator for jobs.Nominally retail sales increased 0.7% for August, after […]
And heading South out of Denver into the mountains of Colorado and New Mexico. Get to “Dan” for issues and problems. More on healthcare when I settle in tonight, Doing some deeper dives into Biden’s ACA modifications, Medicare, and Jayapal’s Bill. Have to split them apart otherwise it would be as long as the opioid’s […]
Jobless claims continue in normal mid-cycle range Last week I encouraged readers to take the very low jobless claims number with a grain of salt due to Labor Day artifacts, and see if the big reduction was maintained or reversed this week. This week did indeed reverse the pattern somewhat, but not enough to interfere […]
So, Whatever Happened To The Arizona Fraudit? Even though these “audits” are now apparently spreading to other states, notably Pennsylvania and maybe Wisconsin, efforts to somehow find election fraud in the presidential elections in those states in 2020, there is an odd thing that has happened that has basically dropped off the media radar screen. […]
“The Justice Department moved on Thursday to block a bankruptcy plan that grants broad legal immunity to the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma, whose drug OxyContin has been at the heart of the nation’s opioid epidemic. William K. Harrington, the U.S. trustee for the Justice Department, filed a motion in federal court to halt confirmation of […]
Debt Ceiling Nonsense Yet Again – A Catch 22? Of course, there should be no debt ceiling. The US is the only nation to have one for absolute amounts of money (some other nations have ones tied to percents of budgets, and so forth). Even though it is nonsensical and absurd, it has been around […]
The events are akin to the film Seven Days In May with a role reversal detailing a rogue General instead of President. Seven Days in May begins with a riot in front of the White House. It’s the late 1960s and U.S. President Jordan Lyman (Fredric March) has recently signed a nuclear disarmament treaty with the […]
Prof. Joel Eissenberg, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Arguably *the* transformative scientific innovation of the past two years was the development and deployment of mRNA vaccines against SARS-CoV-2. But like any innovation, there is a long unsung history, with lots of players nobody heard of. Since the Nobel Prize in Medicine is likely to go to […]
In prior posts, I argued that Australia’s covid policy can be criticized, but that it cannot simply be dismissed on the grounds that it is “authoritarian”. Here I will argue that some criticism of Australian covid policy has a distinct and troubling anti-democracy flavor to it. Tyler Cowen argues that Australia should be investing in […]