by Merrill Goozner GoozNews How high-deductible health insurance plans, touted by free marketeers, caused the medical debt crisis and degraded public health. ~~~~~~~~ The 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, best known for its senior citizen drug plans, also encouraged the rapid expansion of high-deductible health plans (HDHPs). It allowed people, mostly well-off, to put pre-tax earnings […]
– by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. While the inverted yield curve and negative money supply growth keep the long leading indicators negative, both the short leading and coincident indicators have almost all turned neutral or positive. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the […]
– by New Deal democrat To reiterate my Big Picture theme for this year, now that the supply chain tailwind has ended, will the effects of the 2022-23 Fed rate hikes drag the economy down towards recession at last, or will there be a “soft landing” (or no landing at all) instead, because interest rates […]
Angry Bear is fortunate to have amongst its stable of writers, New Deal democrat. I can always count on his having a commentary on a daily basis. If you have not been following his reports on the economy, you should be. A double header today. New home sales: all of the shoes have dropped except […]
Yes, the South is increasing in population according to these Census numbers. There appears to be a reversal in or new growth in the Midwest and the Northeast. The growth is not as great. Texas appears to be growing faster than other parts of the country. I believe the limiting factor is going to be […]
– by New Deal democrat Initial claims declined -8,000 last week to 215,000, well within its recent nine month range, after a two week elevated excursion. The four week moving average, reflecting that excursion, increased to a nine month high of 219,750. Continuing claims, with the usual one week delay, rose 8,000 to 1.794 million, […]
– by New Deal democrat Let me tie this morning’s report on April existing home sales into my two last posts (Part 1 and Part 2), which concerned the huge role that shelter prices, and the underlying shortfall in housing capacity, have in the continued elevation in overall consumer prices. So let’s start by looking […]
– by New Deal democrat Yesterday I discussed how virtually the entire issue of inflation remaining above the Fed’s target was the housing sector. Let me start today’s post where I left off yesterday: namely, that the net level of divergence between total headline inflation and shelter inflation of 1.15% is one of the highest such […]
by Steve Roth Wealth Economics This post is prompted by Matthew Klein’s (very wonky) post about recent changes in QE/QT, and the Fed’s balance sheet. It prompted me to do a quick calculation that I’ve been meaning to get to: when household wealth increases (due to stock-market price runups or really anything else), what effect does that have […]
– by New Deal democrat There’s no economic news of significance until Wednesday’s report on existing home sales. But in the meantime I’ve read a number of takes slicing and dicing last week’s inflation report that I thought missed the mark, so let me take the opportunity today and tomorrow to discuss the essence of […]