My Big Picture It’s a Sunday (Dan here…I put this up late), and it’s been a while since I put up some generalized thoughts on where we are, so let’s update. I’ll go in order of my optimism on the economy, COVID, and the political situation. The economy I am pretty happy about the place […]

Oil prices at 7 year high after longest string of weekly gains on record, Focus on Fracking, Commenter and Blogger RJS Oil prices rose for a record 9th consecutive week to a fresh 7 year high following across the board withdrawals from US oil & product inventories . . . after rising 3.7% to a […]

“Regenerative Agriculture Certification,” Michael Smith, Farmer and Economist Dear Regenerative Certification team, It is a pleasure to submit and share what Foxglove Grove has been working toward since our initial business plan and due diligence exploration phase going back to 2015. As of 2020 we have taken 2018 proof of concept, turned it into an […]

The plight of independent truckers There were quite a few TV shows out there which gave trucking a romantic style of life to live. It was a lot of hard work and not quite like what was portrayed in shows like “Cannonball” or “Movin On.” Just crossing Nebraska would put you to sleep and Cannonball […]

Does economic growth cause unemployment?, Econospeak, Sandwichman, October 24 Usually, a question in the title of an article is a teaser and the answer is almost always “no.” Not in this case. The standard argument is that economic growth is necessary to create jobs and that unemployment results from the slowing or interruption of growth. […]

Wealth is leisure. Leisure, wealth. The three quotes above are from, respectively: 1. William Godwin 2. Charles Wentworth Dilke 3. Karl Marx. There was a very pronounced influence of Godwin on Dilke and of Dilke on Marx (hence indirectly of Godwin on Marx). My research suggests that viewing Marx’s work from the perspective of Dilke’s […]

No Covid-19d-19 Here Or in North Korea: Turkmenistan Yes, Turkmenistan is among the few nations on the planet claiming to have not had a single case of Covid-19, along with the DPRK, aka “North Korea.”  The October 16 Economist reports, after noting the arrest of Nurgeldi Halykov, who reported that the British ambassador got it, […]

This commentary by Professor Heather caught my eye this morning. Interesting findings in the Letter today.. Letters From An American, October 23, 2021, Professor Heather Cox – Richardson There are three stories in the news today that seem to me to add up to a larger picture. First is the story of money laundering, which […]

 Median prices for existing homes is probably at peak; expect inventory to continue to increase Existing home sales were reported yesterday for September, up 7% month over month on a seasonally adjusted basis. While they are about 90% of the market, they are much less important for the economic cycle than are new home sales, […]

Joel Eissenberg, Ph.D., Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology I got the Moderna vaccine as part of the phase III clinical trial back in August and September 2020. Although it was technically a blinded trial, I knew from my symptoms after the second shot I was in the vaccine arm and not the placebo arm […]

Jobless claims show renewed downward trend; still some slack in continued claims Jobless claims declined 6,000 this week to 290,000, yet another pandemic low. The 4 week average also declined 15,250 to 319,750, also another pandemic low: With the exception of the last few years of the last expansion, this level of weekly initial claims […]

Coronavirus dashboard for October 20: as the Delta downtrend slows, is any State closing in on “herd immunity”? It’s been a moment since my last dashboard. That’s primarily because the Columbus Day weekend resulted in anomalies for the past 9 days, that have finally mainly but not completely resolved. Here’s a look at the past […]

Death Valley is not experiencing a drought. Neither is the Mojave, the Sahara, nor the Gobi. A drought is an unusually extended period between the occurrence of a regularly occurring event; an anomaly. For example, when it usually rains on a regular basis, then but doesn’t rain for an unusually long period; that period during […]

A Thousand Words, Version 3

Justices Barrett, Alito, and Thomas have been panhandling. Begging for respect. Turns out that without respect; a Justice is nothing. All six imagined it to be right up there next to Moses, Joseph Smith and those guys; maybe even higher. Didn’t understand that any respect came down from their predecessors, from the legitimacy of their […]

This action by the Michigan Republican part does not surprise me in the least. Republicans have had control of the Senate since 1983 and the House (from what I can see) since 1990. They have had a trifecta (including the governor’s office) 2 of 4 times for a number of years also. Much of this […]

Suppose that you believe, as I do, that the threat to American democracy posed by Donald Trump and his Republican enablers and imitators is by far the most important issue confronting us today.  One implication of this view is that opinion leaders – politicians, pundits, academics, journalists – should make every effort to forestall disaster […]

Hey, this is a copy and paste article by Andrew Sprung at Xpostfactoid. He does a nice job of explaining the technical aspects of expanding the ACA and making it more liberal in providing greater Commercial Healthcare Insurance benefits to more US citizens. He also discusses what could happen if we make Biden’s healthcare extensions […]