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

Expectations of Workers and Firms

Brief Piece by EPI with an introduction . . . In “How will Trumponomics work out?” the author contends Trump will be disappointed in the results of his planned tariffs. Just watching this from the sidelines. The tariffs appear to change weekly and take on the form of various percentage rates, weeks, and months at […]

The Future of the Trump Economy

I pulled this segment from a much longer commentary on PIIE. It was too long to post on Angry Bear. As it is, this segment is longer than what I wanted to post. A key to the commentary at PIIE by Oliver Blanchard is it was written in November 2024.The nation and Tr__p administration supported […]

High fructose corn syrup vs cane sugar

Trump was recently in the news promoting a switch from high fructose corn syrup to cane sugar in Coca-Cola, which he’s claiming credit for. Look, I’m not the world’s best biochemist, but this looked like marketing hype to me. Why is high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) problematic but cane sugar—which is a disaccharide of glucose […]

Topline monthly increase in retail sales betrays weak underlying trend

 – by New Deal democrat Consumption leads employment, and retail sales are the most timely monthly indicator of consumption. Indeed, population-adjusted real retail sales in the past have tended to turn negative one year or more before a recession has begun. In June, nominally retail sales rose a strong 0.6%. But because consumer prices rose 0.3%, […]

June industrial production: a mild coincident positive for the economy

 – by New Deal democrat Industrial production is much less central to the US economic picture than it was before the “China shock,” since so much production moved overseas, meaning US consumers buy much more imported goods than they used to. Still it is an important if diminished coincident indicator. This morning’s report for June was […]

MAHA

Look, if they were serious about making America healthy, here is a short list of things Congress and the Administration can do: • restore and expand Medicaid benefits; • restore and expand SNAP; • eliminate the Medicare Advantage plans; • support and expand childhood vaccinations; • replace our current nightmare of private insurance with single-payer, […]

June CPI: an apparent point of transition

 – by New Deal democrat We are at somewhat of an inflection point as to consumer inflation. On the one hand, the post-pandemic inflationary effects continue to fade. But on the other, we are waiting for the effects of Tariff-palooza!  In June the waning post-pandemic effects continued to dominate, as the only items still rising […]

Physicians in Congress Voted mostly Against the BBB . . . Not

How did physicians align to Tr__p’s “Big Beastly Bill”? As you can see it was along political lines except for one Republican physician. One might think, all physicians would agree, the cutting of funding to pay for Medicaid and the expansion will cause issues. This is not only for medical personnel taking care of patients. […]

Another anti-vaxxer shibboleth bites the dust

One anti-vaxxer conspiracy theory holds that thimerosal, an ethylmercury preservative once used in childhood vaccines, caused the dramatic increase in autism diagnoses in the past 20 years. In addition to the fact that the amount of ethylmercury in vaccines is miniscule and rapidly cleared from the body, thimerosal was discontinued in childhood vaccines back in […]