“September consumer inflation: primarily a function of the fictitious “owners’ equivalent rent” plus new cars” – by New Deal democrat Since last November I’ve been hammering the fact that the official CPI measure of housing inflation, “owners’ equivalent rent,” seriously lagged, as in by a year or more, actual house prices as measured by the […]
“Initial claims continue to rise along with gas prices“ – by New Deal democrat Last week I wrote that initial jobless claims may have ended their recent downtrend. This week appears to have confirmed that. Initial claims rose 9,000 to 228,000, and the 4 week average rose 5,000 to 211,500. Continuing claims, which lag somewhat, […]
Introduction: FFS Medicare Overhead costs are ~2%. Medicare Advantage overhead costs are far higher. The same can be said for commercial healthcare costs paid by insurance companies. Neither MA administered healthcare or commercial insurance plans can compete with FFS Medicare for costs and care. I will touch on a few reasons why on Medicare at […]
USDA has now dropped the World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates in the much awaited October reporting. In a simple one liner, here is the gist of it – lower soy and corn yields this year (drought and lack of fertilizer – we saw this one coming), but wheat supply down, but higher than last […]
As the economy slows, so has producer price growth – by New Deal democrat Consumer prices for September will be released tomorrow. This morning the upstream producer prices were released. Total PPI rose by 0.4%, after two straight months of decline; but excluding those and December 2021, the lowest monthly increase since November 2020. Here are […]
The desire to manage escalation risk – especially the risk of a nuclear attack – has clearly led the United States to withhold weapons from Ukraine. We may also be slow-walking delivery of weapons or limiting quantities to reduce escalation risk, although perceived delays could be due to training and logistics issues or our own […]
The title is not from Letters from an American. It is just my perception of what I envision having happened to the Republican party. Republicans are acting strangely to say the least. Could it be they slept next to some pods pre-January 6th? I had thought and according to the movie related facts, they would […]
Latest mixed bag of articles for the week touching on many topics. The very first article implies there was a grant to the Wuhan, China facility. Not sure why that would occur considering all the ruckus which occurred in the past. There is also an article on the Jacksom Mississippi water issues. Jackson is a […]
Having read at various blogs, I found “annieasksyou” to be interesting and covering a topic in economics for which I have limited bandwidth. It is definitely beyond AB’s version of economics and numbers. I think you will also find annie’s words to be interesting. If you visit her site, be polite. Although Annie is also […]
“For Indigenous Peoples’ Day: on the centrality of mass migrations to human history“ – by New Deal democrat I just finished reading Susan Wise Bauer’s “The History of the Ancient World,” which in a little under 800 pages summarizes an almost endless string of kings and battles from the earliest written records kept by the […]