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

New Deal democrats Weekly Indicators October 28 – November 1

 – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. There’s always some noise in the high frequency data, and this week that noise was in the positive direction, as almost all of the coincident data shows strength. On the other hand (and this is the economy we’re talking about, there’s always […]

“Thinking About” the Power We Hold by Voting

Timothy Snyder energizing us on voting and why we should be voting without fear. We choose the president and not Trump. “Thinking About” . . . Why has Donald Trump shown his darkest side these last few days?  He is energizing his base for the authoritarianism he hopes to bring about.  And he is preparing his voters […]

New Rule Expanding the Coverage of Birth Control

It has been a while since I have posted a Charles Gaba commentary from ACA Signups. Charles is the person to read on the ACA and also governmental healthcare programs impacting and beyond the ACA. Biden-Harris Admin proposes new rule dramatically expanding coverage of birth control, ACA Signups Currently, the Affordable Care Act’s preventative services […]

ISM manufacturing poor again in October

 – by New Deal democrat As usual, next week there will be a dearth of economic data, so I’ll report on construction spending then. In the meantime, we got another poor ISM manufacturing report, with the total index declining to 46.5, the lowest reading this year, while the more leading new orders component increased 1.0 […]

How should we resist Trump?

Michelle Goldberg has a sobering piece (gift link) on what she expects from a second Trump presidency.  Her biggest fear is that Trump will undertake a large-scale roundup of unauthorized immigrants.  Goldberg expects large protests in response to roundups, possibly followed by violent repression of protesters by the military.  I agree that this is both […]

Getting Rid of the FTC’s Lina M. Khan

I hope not. For once there is a civil service servant(?) who is not afraid to challenge big business in the US. If they wish to fire someone? How about the USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy? Why Musk predicts Lina Khan will be “fired soon” by Robert Reich Substack Yesterday, Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX […]

Book Review “The Undoing Project”

 by David Zetland The one-handed economist Michael Lewis wrote this 2016 book about the “intellectual love story” between Amos Tversky (AT) and Daniel Kahneman (DK), two Israeli psychologists who overturned our ideas about risk, decision making and how we see the world. And by “our” I don’t just mean humans but also (to a degree) economists. AT […]

October jobs report: Milton mayhem!

– by New Deal democrat Well, I warned you . . . . I expected a downdraft from the hurricanes, especially Milton, and also the Boeing strike. And boy did we get one! Let me be clear: if there were no special factors, this report would be recessionary, period. And there were some signs of […]