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

Coronavirus dashboard for June 21: watching the States with flat or increasing rates of new cases

Coronavirus dashboard for June 21: watching the States with flat or increasing rates of new cases For the past week I have been sounding the alarm about the economic impact of the “delta” variant of COVID. We are probably already beginning to see its impact on the case count in several States, with many more […]

Cover All Births And Modernize Maternity Care

Medicare For All? Start At The Beginning: Cover All Births And Modernize Maternity Care | Health Affairs It has been two years since I wrote on women’s healthcare and three important topics impacting women; clinical trials done without women participants, a failing birth control device – Essure, and maternal healthcare. The Health Affairs article is […]

Producer Prices Rises 0.8% in May

Producer Price Index YoY Records for Final Demand and Intermediate Services; 46 year High for Intermediate Goods, 48 year High for Raw Materials Commenter RJS and MarketWatch 666 blogger The seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 0.8% in April, as prices for finished wholesale goods rose 1.5% while margins of final services providers […]

Manchin on Voting Rights

The news is that Joe Manchin has described a voting rights compromise which he supports. Also Republicans immediately said it was unacceptable to them. This reminds everyone that there will be no bipartisan compromise on an issue where the two parties have diametrically opposite interests. If there were any Republicans who did not equate democrats […]

Bottom Line On The Biden-Putin Summit

Bottom Line On The Biden-Putin Summit  According to Robyn Dixon of the Washington Post on 6/18/21 regarding the outcome of the Buden-Putin summit in Geneva, I shall simply quote directly from what looks to be the bottom line from Putin himself: Despite a packed European tour schedule, Biden “looked fresh” and was “fully aware of […]

The decline in new jobless claims stalls, as the “delta” variant is ready to strike the unvaccinated States

The decline in new jobless claims stalls, as the “delta” variant is ready to strike the unvaccinated States New jobless claims continue to be the most important weekly economic data point, as increasing numbers of vaccinated people and outdoor activities have led to an abatement of the pandemic, with both new infections and deaths at […]

The Powell Memo by Senator Whitehouse

Senator Whitehouse posted the clips of his presentation on the Powell Memo at youtube. Ken posted the text of it here. I have known about the Powell memo for a long time. People really do need to come to internalize just what this part of our political history means for our present day social structure […]