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

People Should Be Joining Together

People are still going at each other, according to one Senator (Utah). Yes, he was a Republican. You may despise him, dislike or hate him, etc. However, violent retaliation is not the answer. To me, this is horrific. “On Political Violence” Civil Discourse Tonight, people from across the political spectrum should be joining together to […]

As consumer inflation shows more signs of re-acceleration, the Fed is being forced to pick its poison

– by New Deal democrat The Fed is really facing a no-win situation. Between the recent employment reports, the QCEW, and even this morning’s jobless claims report, the jobs market has clearly been weakening, and may be on the very cusp of contraction, implicating the Fed’s dual mandate to strive for full employment. But this morning’s […]

Initial claims have a Texas-sized increase

– by New Deal democrat I’ll post about the CPI later this morning. But unusually, the biggest news of the morning was initial jobless claims, which spiked to 263,000, an increase of 27,000 from the previous week. The four week moving average increased 9,750 to 240,500. Meanwhile, with the typical one week delay, continuing claims were […]

Revoking visas of Palestinian President, etc.

As a world leader, Rubio and Trump’s actions make no sense. The US is supposed to make it easier for officials from all nations who want to attend the UN headquarters. This decision (which Israel has welcomed) is detrimental to a peace initiative. According to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas the visa decision “is a clear […]

Ranking Chicago According to a Murder Rate

Merrill Goozner did all the work in “Where does Chicago’s murder rate rank?” Having grown up in Chicago also, I felt safe. Then to I knew where I could be and stayed out of certain areas I should not be. I (we) were careful and alert to the situation and environment around us. Where does […]

August producer prices largely a reflection of volatile food and energy prices

– by New Deal democrat Consumer price inflation will be reported tomorrow. In the meantime, this morning producer prices for August were reported. Normally I don’t pay too much attention to producer prices – and I won’t this month, either. But let me put that in some context. In the past, when producer prices have outstripped […]

Trump Taking Much of Medicaid and some of Medicare Away . . .

Trump has no fear of US Citizens. Republicans have reason to be fearful in the next election, if this bill is passed. But Repubs are not showing much fear. A lot of detail in this commentary. To make things from bad to really bad? The new law restricts a states’ ability to raise revenue for […]

BLS Revision is Worse than Expected

Understanding the latest BLS Jobs report. What they are stating is, the labor force is large at 140 million and companies tend to overstate employment. Probably for good reason. If they all stated what was really happening in their company and industry, we probably would have been in trouble far earlier. In which case, profits […]

RFK Jr is America’s Lysenko

In the early years of the USSR, Soviet genetics was internationally recognized. Then along came Trofim Lysenko, an agronomist who convinced Stalin that he could bypass the laborious genetics of plant breeding to develop strains of wheat through the transmission of acquired traits. This fit well with the Soviet philosophy that humanity could be transformed […]