JAMA Network “How Do Commercial Insurance Plans Fare Under Proposed Prescription Drug Price Regulation?” Rena M. Conti, Richard G. Frank, Len M. Nichols December 2021, this article came out detailing Medicare negotiating directly with pharmaceutical companies and the impact of the negotiation on people insured by commercial plans. That is if commercial insurance plans were […]

Jobless claims: once again, a relentless uptrend I feel like a broken record at this point, as every week the trend seems more and more relentless. Initial jobless claims rose once again, by 14,000 (seriously revised down by 12,000 from last week’s reading of 260,000) to 262,000. More importantly, the 4 week average rose another […]

The world economy is undergoing extreme changes that have been both generational as well as exacerbated by lack of investment, global pandemic and supply chain crunch. Logistical nightmare aside, the generational shift from the prosperity of the Baby Boomer generation in the West as well as the great readjustment in China post Mao and the […]

Just some ramblings of mine after looking at numbers . . . . Immigration, Population Replacement, Politics, and the Economy are what comes together to ensure national growth. I am going to talk each in no particular order to answer my own questions that come up from time to time. Voting patterns continue to change. […]

July consumer inflation: a tale of two disparate trends  – by New Deal democrat Consumer prices were unchanged in July, as two very disparate trends canceled out one another. YoY prices increased 8.5%, below June’s multi-decade record of 9.0%: The two disparate trends are shown in the below bar graph of monthly changes since the […]

Coronavirus dashboard for August 9: BA.5 dominant, with a slow waning; a model for endemicity  – by New Deal democrat  BIobot’s most recent update, through last week, shows a decline of 15% of COVID in wastewater, consistent with about 460,000 “real” new infections per day: All 4 Census regions (not shown) are participating in […]

Weekly Indicators for August 1 – 5 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Several important metrics have reversed course in the past month. Interest rates, especially mortgage rates, have declined (in the case of mortgages, by 1 full % from their peak. As many have pointed […]

I subscribe to Prof. Heather Cox’s site. I pick the posts I believe might be interesting to AB readers. This one fits the spirit of the day. August 5, 2022, Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson On this day in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln signed into law a new tax law to help fund […]

July jobs report: in which an absolute positive blowout make me happily wrong; all pandemic job losses now recovered  –  by New Deal democrat As I wrote earlier this week, the short leading indicators for both jobs (real retail sales) and the unemployment rate (initial jobless claims) have each signaled that we should expect weaker […]

Jobless claims continue their relentless climb  – by New Deal democrat Initial jobless claims rose 6,000 to 260,000 last week. More importantly, the 4 week average, which has been rising relentlessly, rose another 6,000 as well to 254,750, an 8 month high.  Continuing claims also rose 48,000 to 1,417,000, the highest since April: Initial claims […]