There is no shortage of explanations for Democratic losses in yesterday’s elections.  Here is my quick partial list with a few comments.  Additions welcome. Basic structural explanations: Democratic losses are a standard mid-term loss for the President’s party.  [No doubt.  Without checking, I suspect the losses were larger than normal.] Democratic losses reflect standard retrospective […]

A followup to an article I had read and previous findings. Not the first time, a drug or drug combination has been disapproved. This usually comes from a lack of supporting evidence coming from clinical trials. Instead there are various studies conducted which show varying degrees of results which may have questionable data. In the […]

(Dan here…originally published 12:11 a.m. Nov. 3. We now know Youngkin won the Virginia governer’s race) GOP Does Well As Dow Jones Average Crosses Major Milestone Of 36,000.  I am posting before the election results of Nov. 2, 2021, are fully in, but it looks that the GOP candidates will win in Virginia, where Biden […]

Commenter and Blogger RJS at Marketwatch 666; “September Durable Goods: New Orders Down 0.4%, Shipments Up 0.4%, Inventories Up 0.9%“ September Advanced Report Durable Goods Manufacturer Shipments, Inventories, and Orders, US Census The Advance Report on Durable Goods Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders for September (pdf) from the Census Bureau reported that the value of the […]

September personal income and spending: positive, but consumers’ “cushion” of pandemic assistance savings is now exhausted Real personal income and spending held up well throughout the pandemic, due to a vigorous government response. This morning these were reported for the first month after the expiration of the last such assistance. In nominal terms, personal income declined […]

The Great Barrington Declaration is the founding text of one influential school of covid-libertarianism.  The GBD made two claims – First, that we should try to protect the vulnerable from contracting covid, and, Second, that we should let the virus spread freely through the non-vulnerable population to reduce the time needed to get to herd […]

Commenter and Blogger RJS, Focus on Fracking, The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending October 22nd indicated that after a modest increase in our oil imports and a modest decrease in our oil exports, we had surplus oil to add to our stored commercial […]

Professor Joel Eissenberg, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Years ago, I was visiting Halle in the former East Germany and my host took me to the nearby town of Leipzig. While walking through town, he stopped at the shop window of a coin collecting store that displayed the defunct East German 50- and 100-Mark notes. My […]

(Hence the correctness of the theory of surplus population and surplus capital…) Marx mentioned, “the theory of surplus population and surplus capital,” parenthetically, in the Grundrisse and “surplus population and surplus capital” in his 1862-63 draft of Capital. Although it isn’t certain what theory exactly he was referring to, the phrase reappears, in reverse order, in chapter 15, […]