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

New home sales make 3 year high as price pressures for existing homes abate and inventory increases

  – by New Deal democrat Since new and existing home sales were released just one day apart, I figured I would report on both of them together; in particular because for well over a year I have been looking for, and tracking, the rebalancing of this market, where a lack of inventory of existing homes […]

What you need to share about the “one big beautiful” ugly horrible bill

I subscribe to Robert Reich’s site also. The old economist as he calls himself asks that subscribers publish this particular commentary of Roberts, He is attempting to publish more information above Trumps tax cut bill. I can vouch for question 1 as I posted on how a cut in Medicare could happen. Robert is claiming […]

The Bond Market is Not Amused: on the importance of Moody’s debt downgrade and the GOP budget bill

 – by New Deal democrat Today let me address the GOP bust-out budget bill, and how that plays into Moody’s downgrade of US debt last week. And the bottom line is that, it is bad. The rubber is starting to hit the road. Let me start out with the below graph from the CBO of the […]

Cuts to Medicaid and maybe Medicare

Briefly, a fast read . . . Trumps extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) is a $3.8 trillion extension of it which will mostly benefit the wealthy and corporations. Professor Heather at “Letters from an American” (to which I subscribe) had this to say yesterday about the extension current being passed […]

Jobless claims: more of the same old, same old

 – by New Deal democrat The story continues to be “same old, same old” with unemployment claims. Initial claims declined -2,000 last week to 227,000. The four week moving average rose 1,000 to 231,500. With the typical one week delay, continuing claims rose 36,000 to 1.903 million: The YoY story continues to be the same as […]

Medicare Advantage: Alleged Kickbacks Further Expose Corruption

CEPR’s Brandon Novick wrote a piece on Medicare Advantage plans. It is brief enough to make for easy reading, It also gets to the point of Medicare Advantage plans. As it was commercial Medicare Advantage plans were overcharging for the same care Traditional Medicare would charge. In many cases the plans would not approve the […]

Japan stands up to Trump

My prediction is that the “negotiations” will be over what kind of fig leaf Japan will allow in return for abject Trump Administration capitulation: “Japan on Tuesday clarified its stance on U.S. tariffs, saying it wants all new levies put into place by the administration of President Donald Trump completely removed, confirming a hard-line position […]

Have any impacts from Tariff-palooza! shown up in hard data yet?

 – by New Deal democrat A few days ago, Prof. Menzie Chinn at Econbrowser posted the below graphs comparing the time that hard vs. soft data reacted to economic shocks: As you know, I have been looking at hard “high frequency” data to see if any of the effects of Tariff-palooza! have shown up yet. And […]

China POM Tariffs

Another “tit for tat” situation between China and the US. Polyoxymethylene (POM), is better known as acetal, polyacetal, and polyformaldehyde It is an engineering thermoplastic used in precision parts requiring high stiffness, low friction, and excellent dimensional stability. To better explain . . . the applications of polyacetals include moving parts in appliances and machines (gears, […]