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

War Comes to Kyiv

War Comes to Kyiv | The New Yorker, Joshua Yaffa Interesting article that showed up in my inbox. This is a copy and paste ot it with minor editing. If you follow the link, there are other short articles to be read. I believe the takeaway from this article is the courage of Zelensky. The […]

EIA, Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data

RJS, Focus on Fracking, SPR at a 19 year low: total oil + products supplies, including SPR, at a 7 3/4 year low, distillate supplies at 26 month low Overall oil inventories finally rose after a million+ barrel per day jump in oil imports; commercial crude supplies saw their biggest increase since October 10th after pulling ~350k barrels per […]

New home sales increasing trend continues – for now; expect a major pullback in coming months

New home sales increasing trend continues – for now; expect a major pullback in coming months With mortgage rates having risen sharply (as of this morning Mortgage News Daily has the 30-year rate up to 4.19%, the highest in nearly three years), we are at an important moment for the housing market. In that context, […]

The Omicron wave has receded by almost 90%; what about deaths?

Coronavirus dashboard for February 23: the Omicron wave has receded by almost 90%; what about deaths? No economic data today (Feb. 23), so let’s update the situation with COVID-19. My usual source of graphs, 91-Divoc, is down today, so less elaborate, cluttered graphs from the NYT site to follow. The Omicron wave peaked in the […]

New 50+ year low in continuing jobless claims

New 50+ year low in continuing jobless claims [Programming note: I will post about new home sales later this morning.] Initial claims (blue) declined 17,000 to 232,000 (vs. the pandemic low of 188,000 on December 4). The 4 week average (red) declined 7,250 to 236,250 (vs. the pandemic low of 199,750 on December 25). Continuing […]

Vladimir V. Putin Loses His Mind And Becomes A War Criminal

Vladimir V. Putin Loses His Mind And Becomes A War Criminal Russian President Vladimir V. Putin has just announced a “special military operation” to “de-Nazify the Ukrainian government” so as to halt the supposed “genocide” being committed against Russian speakers in Ukraine.  There is not a shred of justification for any of this.  The extreme […]

Ethanol Is Worse for the Climate Than Gasoline

A Story Treehugger has been spotlighting this famous Andy Singer cartoon since 2007. “Treehugger, Sustainability for All” received a boost from Slate in and around 2006 when I was a “starred-commenter” (don’t ask) at Slate’s “Moneybox (Daniel Gross)” and “Best of the Fray.” Slate management decided to blow the place up and eliminated the comments sections […]