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

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 […]

Some Links to Healthcare Articles You May Find Interesting

I was reading about various healthcare issues I found on the internet and in particular Today on Medscape. The snippets are of longer articles which go into greater detail. You may find other articles to be of interest on Medscape at Latest Medical News, Clinical Trials, Guidelines, Today on Medscape. That is if they are […]

Andy Biggs, Paul Gosar, and Eli Crane of Arizona and Medicaid

In Arizona’s Mr. Andrew Biggs is lecturing us on how Republicans are going to pass a spending bill benefiting those who do not need tax breaks to get by. Instead of cutting Defense or some other programs, Andrew along with other AZ Republicans such as Elijah James Crane will be cutting Medicaid which supports lower […]

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, […]