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

Rethinking the Relative Value Scale Update

Rethinking the RUC, Center for American Progress, Maura Calsyn and Madeline Twome The point being made in this commentary is the purposeful inaccuracy of the RUC. Much of the time determined for treatment too large which in turn drives the patient fees charged and the prices in Medicare Advantage to which CMS adds a percentage, […]

Initial jobless claims: a little soft, but continued expansion signaled

Initial jobless claims: a little soft, but continued expansion signaled  – by New Deal democrat I’ll put up an analysis of this morning’s CPI later. In the meantime, initial jobless claims rose 21,000 last week to 248,000. The more important 4 week moving average rose 2,750 to 231,000. With a one week delay, continuing claims […]

What to look for in tomorrow’s CPI and Friday’s PPI

What to look for in tomorrow’s CPI and Friday’s PPI  – by New Deal democrat  We’re still in the post-jobs report lull in economic news today. That will end tomorrow with initial jobless claims, and also CPI and PPI tomorrow and Friday respectively. I always watch CPI, but I believe the PPI is uniquely important […]

What Happened to America’s Shopping Experience?

The American Shopping Experience has changed over the years with people abandoning in person shopping to internet shopping. What has evolved with the use of the internet is major malls and stores closing their doors and increases in warehouse shopping via the internet. Some History An Austrian-born émigré and architect in 1948, Victor Gruen was […]

Why do physicians make so much?

According to this WaPo article, the average physician in the US earns $350K/yr. I didn’t click through to the actual data, but from the first table, I’m guessing that “average” means median, not mean. And physician income isn’t a Gaussian distribution—there’s a long right-hand tail for the specialties. Why is this? It looks to me […]

Scenes from the July employment report

Scenes from the July employment report  – by New Deal democrat On Friday I noted that the July employment report was a perfectly good, solid one in absolute terms, but that almost all the leading components were soft and weakening, as I would expect to see near the final stages of an expansion. Let’s take a […]

Railroad unions are winning paid sick leave for workers

From December 2022, Angry Bear has been covering parts of the railroad workers efforts to achieve better conditions for conductors’ engineers and labor in general. It appears all of the work by the union is coming to pass. Railroad unions are winning paid sick leave for workers, The Stand, July 11, 2023 WASHINGTON, D.C. (July […]

New Deal democrats Weekly Indictors for July 31-Aug 4

Weekly Indicators for July 31 – August 4, and long term forecast through H1 2024 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. No big changes in the data, but note that mortgage and other interest rates are up close to their peaks. This will operate to slow […]

Project 2025 . . .

July 28, 2023 in g’da said Reprise from a Thirsty Thor’sday link. Homeless on the High Desert, Ten Bears ‘Battle plan’: How the far right will dismantle climate programs A coalition of conservative groups has assembled a plan to systematically target most of the federal government’s work on climate and clean energy. It proposes a sweeping deconstruction of government […]

Cities need to secure their drinking water

Another city and maybe the country having issues securing safe drinkables water for its citizens. Here in the southwest, I do not believe we will be too far behind Uruguay. Still planning to build and building before the Federal governments says no. Cities need to secure their drinking water, The one-handed economist, David Zetland DL […]