– by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. In the aggregate, consumer spending remains robust. On the other hand, as I pointed out yesterday with my aggregation of the various regional Fed reports on manufacturing and services, the largest sector of the US economy appears to be stagnant or even shrinking […]
Apparently, the National Guard shooter in DC was an Afghan refugee. Now the Trump Administration has got its panties in a twist, calling it an act of “terrorism” and blaming all Afghan refugees. “Afghan refugees in Massachusetts who fled the Taliban in recent years fear they won’t be able to stay in the country after […]
Book Review: The World for Sale The one-handed economist Javier Blas and Jack Farchy (B&F) published this book in 2022, and I decided to read it after hearing them discuss it on a podcast. The book focuses on commodity traders “who barter the Earth’s resources” as it says in the subtitle. On the one hand, these […]
Reading Prof. Heather Cox Richardson’s take on American history always reveals something I did not know. misunderstood, or what I wanted to know of about. There is a message here which I believe applies to the events occurring in the United States today. I subscribe to Prof. Heather’s Substack and find her words to be […]
I was a Boy Scout for about three years as a teenager. The troop I was in was sponsored by the Knights of Columbus. Every evening on camping trips we said the rosary around the campfire. I progressed to Star Scout rank before dropping out. One of my younger brothers was in a different troop […]
Inherited Economies Biden and Trump, Patreon – by Dean Baker Donald Trump may not be able to remember what things were like five years ago, when he handed the economy and the country to Joe Biden, but it is important that the rest of us do. As in so many other areas where Trump tries […]
I lived in Tennessee from 1958, when my parents moved to Oak Ridge, until 1977 when I moved to Chapel Hill NC to start grad school. While these might be considered my “formative years,” I don’t consider myself a Tennessean. Judged by number of years spent in a state, I’m Missourian, since I lived in […]
This report from Environmental Health News (EHN) is 3= years old. I would regard it as relatively accurate in 2025. In Livingston County Michigan, the lakes were polluted with types of PFAS and many of the fish caught in lakes such as Strawberry lake carried PFAS. Unknown to many, people were eating the fish. I can not […]
If Congress does not extend the enhanced premium tax credits, older Marketplace enrollees, especially early retirees and the self-employed, would see some of the steepest increases in premiums. The enhanced premium tax credits lowered the share of income enrollees had to pay toward premiums and expanded subsidy eligibility to people with incomes above 400% of the federal […]
Scenes from the very tardy September jobs report – by New Deal democrat An opening comment: it is an abomination that the US government treated its statistical agencies as doing expendable work. Thus, after over 85 years of continuity, there will never be an unemployment rate, nor a consumer inflation reading, for October. Which means we […]