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

Time for A Few Small Repairs?

Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send only $280, an error that could hinder the bank’s attempt to persuade regulators that it has fixed long-standing operational issues. Yes, that is 81 trillion U.S. Dollars, which about says it all. The good news for Citi is that–this time–they managed to get […]

January income and spending show unresolved seasonality in a typical late cycle configuration

 – by New Deal democrat There were two important points in this morning’s personal income and spending report for January. The first is that there appears to be some unresolved seasonality at work. The second is that nevertheless both were weaker than one year ago. Nominally personal income rose 0.9%, while spending declined -0.2%. Since […]

Medicaid Fraud Reduction Might Save $50 Billion

At the most. The GOP leadership keeps trumpeting work requirements and fraud when asked where they’ll find $880 billion in cuts to health care programs. That’s nonsense according to Merrill Goozner. The fraudulent work requirement meme, GoozNews I was glad to see fellow substacker Paul Krugman weigh in this morning on how the Republican Party is attacking […]

The end of “steady as she goes” in jobless claims?

– by New Deal democrat This week’s report on initial jobless claims was of particular interest, because of the issue of whether Federal employees laid off by the new Administration would cause an increase. It appears they did. Initial jobless claims rose 22,000 for the week to 242,000, and the four week moving average rose 8,500 […]

Unions, Labor, and Work Stoppages

As the EPI article says decades of federal policy and court decisions have placed limit on Labor’s to strike as allowed under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Evolving over the years, millions of workers have been excluded from the NLRA right to strike. As you can see on the graph below the numbers of […]

Techno-Stalinism and the death of democracy

A former mentor once explained to me why America would be better off if scientists ran the country. While technocracy isn’t inherently anti-democratic—America could simply elect scientists and engineers—the notion smacks of elitism. Of course, this country was founded on the idea of elitism. Only property-owning White men could vote. The president was appointed by […]

Planned Budget Cuts and Impact

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen review Trumps budget cuts. The implication here is it is near impossible to achieve the dramatic cuts without imposing severe penalties on the US Citizenry, The attempt is to balance the budget so as intakes equal outtakes of funds. Except Trump does not want to fix his 2017 tax break. […]

Reasons for Taking a New Job

When I started out. it was the money. Kind of hard to buy a house and have kids if together you are pulling in $24,000/year. Then when the family starts, one of us will not be working (that was the plan). Get the first job, change jobs at two years, and work your way up […]