Via Naked Capitalism: Place based economic conditions and the geography of the opioid overdose crisis By Shannon Monnat, Associate Professor, Syracuse University. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website Over 400,000 people in the U.S. have died from opioid overdoses since 2000. However, there is widespread geographic variation in fatal opioid overdose rates, […]

(Dan here….)  Via the New York Times comes an article on the Social Security shortfall.  No explanations given for what the shortfall context is, and not till the end was a fix suggested.  In comments calling SS a ponzi scheme (with no explanation) was common, or with the fix mostly was about lifting the cap.  […]

Regional Fed indexes confirm that manufacturing is flat [A reminder: this week I’m on vacation, so light posting is the rule.] Earlier this week the Empire State Manufacturing Index went negative. This morning the Philly Index just barely avoided the same, reported at up +0.3 for June: The more leading new orders index declined to […]

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for June 10 – 14 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The divergence between the near term vs. longer term forecast is increasing, and the risk that the forecast is too optimistic is asymmetrical, because for the economy, Trump’s chaotic tariff behavior cannot improve […]

by New Deal democrat The slowdown cometh I submitted a long post on the above to Seeking Alpha. They haven’t put it up yet. When they do, I’ll link to it here.   UPDATE: Here’s the link. Long story short: you all know that a year ago I forecast a slowdown by about mid-year this year. Everything except […]