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

Positive trend in jobless claims continues through year end

[Note: Yesterday was a travel day, and I didn’t get around to posting the regional Fed services survey averages for December. I’ll try to get to that later today.] The last weekly jobless report continues the trend of an improved picture – as in, very few people are getting laid off – that has typified […]

Raising Taxes on The Rich in Income for Healthcare

This short piece suggests how healthcare could be paid for in the US. A necessary first step to restore faith in American democracy and the public sector. or how to close the nation’s current fiscal gap. Right now the current Republican Administration led by President Tru_p solution is to cut healthcare via Medcaid to much […]

Regional Fed manufacturing indexes suggest 2025 trends are slowly abating

 – by New Deal democrat Although the federal government shutdown has been over for a month and a half, most of the data that has been released has lagged badly, especially including data on sales, spending, and business orders. That means that the most current measures of these are the ISM manufacturing and non-manufacturing reports, due […]

AI Rapidly Replacing Labor – Workers

Artificial intelligence is already taking jobs from human workers, but according to renowned computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, the real disruption may only be getting started. In a weekend interview on CNN’s State of the Union, Hinton predicted that AI systems will make significant leaps in 2026, gaining capabilities that could allow them to replace an even […]

Weekly Indicators for December 22 – 26, 2025

 – by New Deal democrat My ”Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. The year ended with a magnification of several trends that have been a theme all year: the US $ is down almost 10%, largely responsible for a nearly 15% rise in commodity prices, while consumer spending ended with a bang as well. “Commerce […]

Europe’s water reserves

I would have thought the Unted States would be the first to have issues. We are not careful with our usage or pollution runoff. United States Citizens take fresh water for granted and abuse the usage of it. I have found Europeans to be more careful in their usage of fresh water and the pollution […]

Brief Rundown on EVs, etc. v Gasoline Powered Vehicles

Nothing too technical, just some conversation and points. It has been found or reported, hybrid vehicles incur fewer issues and problems than gasoline vehicles. On the other side of the spectrum, fully electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) can have more issues. Let’s face it, the technology is still new and manufacturing and research in the US are […]

How the “wealth effect” fueled Q3 GDP

 – by New Deal democrat In Q3, personal spending rose 1.6%, or 6.4% annualized, while personal incomes only rose 0.8%, or 3.3% annualized. A little more precisely, personal spending rose 0.75% more than personal incomes. Just how much more did spending rise than the income to fuel it compared on a historical basis? In the past […]