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

Some thoughts on Nuclear Proliferation

I present myself as an expert here, but may be confused. You should probably stick to Wikipedia. I’m not sure the centifuges in North Korea are all that important. North Korea doesn’t use centrifuges to make bombs. Like almost everyone (all except Pakistan and the thin boy made by the US& UK & dropped on […]

Sanction Trump not Bourbon

This post “America’s allies should respond to steel tariffs with targeted sanctions on the Trump Organization” by Matthew Yglesias is brilliant (even though he is mainly agreeing with the prior brilliant article by Scott Gilmore “Trade sanctions against America won’t work. Sanctioning Trump himself might.” The proposal is so brilliant and the case for it […]

Investors Not Pleased With Italian Politicians

The extreme conflict between the establishment and the new natonal populist majority in Parliament has spooked investors. The difference between the Italian and German 10 year treasury rates just jumped up about 100 basis points. This isn’t a crisis yet. I recall back when Italia caught a bit of Greek contagion (before ECB president Mario […]

Carlo Cottarelli

Carlo Cottarelli was asked to try to form an Italian government by President Sergio Mattarella. There is no chance that Cottarelli will obtain the confidence of Parliament (parties including a majority of deputies have brought up the possibility of impeaching Mattarella for nominating Cottarelli). Mattarella is using his extraordinary powers to fight populist nationalists who […]

The Italian Crisis: La resa di Conte

(literally the surrender of Conte but a reference to The Big Gundown). updated to comply with the Italian criminal code (which forbids vilifying the President of the Republic) I have to write about Italian politics, because everyone is (and I live in Rome) but you don’t have to read it. I will try one paragraph […]

Healthcare’s Three Legged Stool

Charles Gaba at ACASignups talks about the three legs of healthcare supporting it, the composition of them, and why each of those legs are necessary for healthcare. Charles reviews Enrollee Responsibility, Career Responsibility, and Government Responsibly (the three legs) necessary to support Healthcare in the US, explains how each Republican bill has or would have […]

Trump to ban Title X federal funding of Planned Parenthood Clinics regardless of whether they Do Abortions or Not

“The Trump administration wants to effectively pull Title X funding from family planning clinics providing abortion services” as reported in Modern Healthcare. Planned Parenthood while offering other healthcare services would not receive federal funding if they provided any abortion services or referred patients to other facilities that did perform abortions. The Washington Post “For Planned […]

Sister Survivors

The Detroit News story, January 2018 “What MSU Knew” details when the abuse started. For twenty years, the female athletes who engaged in the Michigan State Gymnastics program complained of Dr. Larry Nassar to university representatives. MSU President Lou Anna Simon was amongst those who were informed and had known of the 2014 Title IX […]

Michigan Medicaid Waiver

The State of Michigan Legislature is applying for an ACA Waiver as I pointed out in my post Why States Should Not Be Allowed to Alter the ACA with Waviers This is a relief valve for “counties” with high unemployment. In effect if Michigan counties have a high unemployment rate (8.5% or above), the unemployed […]