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

No Free Lunch Ignoring Social Security’s Timely Cheap Fix Costs You

Dale Coberly Talks Social Security . . . For over ten years I have been telling anyone who would listen . . . about ten people . . . that the great “Looming Unfunded Twenty-Two Trillion Dollar Deficit! . . . stealing our children’s future,” reported in all the high-end news sources by all the […]

Integrity Use to Be a Valuable Commodity in New Home Building

Our first new home purchase. I knew we were to have issues and would be working through them. It was new and something we had not had before. Arizona’s Registrar of Contractors says they are seeing an uptick in complaints against new home builders. Residents in Maricopa City is south of Phoenix where state highway […]

Housekeeping Note

I have become addicted to Twitter. Among other things, I stopped posting here. Recently I posted a complaint about Chrome and messed up certificates (warnings that sites were not private because they had a dialog box pop up). Among other sites, this site had that problem with Chrome. I swore to never use Chrome again. […]

New Deal democrats Weekly Indicators for September 4 – 8 2023

Weekly Indicators for September 4 – 8 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The tug of war between the headwind of high interest rates and the tailwind of low commodity and consumer inflation continues. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you right up […]

Open Thread September 9, 2023 Where do Americans mingle the most?

A question being asked by The Economist; Where do Americans mingle?, Vienna Virginia  Sit-down chain restaurants foster more cross-class mixing than any other institution. Sit-down chain restaurants, like Olive Garden, Chili’s, and Applebee’s are prime sites for many Americans. Restaurants bring Americans together more than any other private or public institution and eclipse bars, churches, petrol […]

Jimmy Kimmel and Candidate Jimmy McMillan said rents were too high. What about drug prices?

Excellent take on Drug Pricing as written by Dr. N. Adam Brown at MedPage Today. In 2016 the 21st Century Cures Act was passed by the House. The intent was to make it easier for pharmaceutical companies to bring new drugs to market and short cut the clinical trial processes. Health Affairs had this to […]

Coronavirus update: the virus is back; everyone should return to their prior precautions and get boosted this fall

Coronavirus update: the virus is back; everyone should return to their prior precautions and get boosted this fall  – by New Deal democrat At the beginning of this year, I indicated that I anticipated only writing about Covid if something significant was happening.  It is, so let’s look at the data. Almost all State and Federal […]

Ukraine update

The Yale historian Timothy Snyder first came to my attention in a footnote of an article in The New York Review of Books. The footnote gave a link to a series of 23 online lectures on the history of Ukraine, which I binge-watched over a period of about five days. I also read his books […]

Despite 6+ month low in initial claims, yellow caution flag remains

Despite 6+ month low in initial claims, yellow caution flag remains  – by New Deal democrat Last week the initial claims numbers justified restarting the yellow caution flag. This week initial jobless claims declined -13,000 to a 6+ month low of 216,000. The 4-week moving average declined -8,500 to 229,250. With a one-week lag, continuing claims […]