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

What News was in My In-Box

Kind of a mixed bag of what news was showing up in My In-Box. It was evenly spread amongst various topics. Ford building a battery plant just like everyone else is planning. Wall Street buying up residential homes. That purchasing of houses will come to no-good for the average citizen. ACA Preventive is under threat […]

House price indexes: more evidence of a summer peak

House price indexes: more evidence of a summer peak  – by New Deal democrat The Case Shiller and FHFA house price indexes were updated through July (technically, the average of May through July) this morning. Ordinarily I do not pay them too much mind, but this year they are very important in confirming a peak in […]

Gas and oil price update: good news and bad news

Gas and oil price update: good news and bad news We’ll get some important house price information tomorrow, but there is no economic news of significance today, so let’s update gas and oil prices. As indicated in the title, there’s good news and bad news. I’ll start with the bad news first. According to GasBuddy, […]

Markups and profits skyrocket

Mike Konczal and Niko Lusiani at the Roosevelt Institute take a closer quantitative look at the sources of inflation the last two years: This research brief is the first to explore the size and distribution of markups (essentially the difference between sales and marginal costs) and profit margins across 3,698 firms operating in the US […]

Measure and Regulate Embodied Carbon in Everything

I do not have an exact date when this was written. It appears to have been update May 2021. I find it interesting as US automakers are making moves to switch from combustion powered vehicles to electrically powered vehicles utilizing rechargeable batteries to provide the power. US automaker Ford is so committed to this conversion; […]

Weekly Indicators for September 19 – 23

Weekly Indicators for September 19 – 23 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators column is up at Seeking Alpha. For the third week in a row, interest rates increased, and gas prices, along with the prices of other commodities, tumbled. While the decline in gas prices is good, the downturn in […]

“Whacking Labor” to Fight Inflation and Fix the Economy

It is refreshing to see Dean Baker using one of the words I use to describe what the FED does when they are hiking Interest Rates. Those FED actions do not create results over night. Because they can’t, read on. Powell appears to be frustrated by the lack of economic slowing. Maybe there are other […]