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

Real personal income and spending both decline in May – but that’s OK

Real personal income and spending both decline in May – but that’s OK, as it was mainly expiration of stimulus; NBER likely to declare end of recession soon The last of the 4 monthly coincident markers for whether the economy is in recession vs. expansion was reported this morning for May. Let’s take a look. […]

Threatened

Living the Big Lie In the more insular areas of the red states, of all the states, some have been saying, thinking, and believing like Marjorie Taylor Greene since forever. In these areas, this narrative of Marjorie’s wasn’t unusual to the local ear; neither was what Trump was saying. Trump’s election in 2016, accorded the […]

COVID-19 Vaccinations

If vaccinations are available, then one should get the vaccine. Briefly . . . Mildly Ill Young COVID-19 Patients Report Lasting Symptoms, MedScape More than half of young adults with mild COVID-19 who self-isolated at home were still reporting troublesome after-effects six months later, a study from Norway published in Nature Medicine found. The study […]

May’s Personal Income Down 2.0%, Spending Unchanged

2 Months PCE Would Add 7.36 Percentage Points to Q2 GDP Angry Bear Commenter RJS and Marketwatch 666 blogger computes the impact of real PCE from this report on GDP and explains his math. The May report Personal Income and Outlays from the Bureau of Economic Analysis gives us nearly half the data that will go […]

Interesting News Events

Justice Dept. Will Toughen Rules for Seizing Lawmakers’ Data, Garland Says (msn.com) The Justice Department will tighten its rules for when law enforcement officials may seize information about members of Congress and their aides, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said on Monday amid a backlash to the disclosure of a 2018 subpoena that swept in data from […]

The Need to Be Vaccinated Against Covid

Frequent commenter Professor of  Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Joel Eissenberg discusses history of vaccinations and the need to be vaccinated. Why everyone needs to get vaccinated. Infectious diseases beset all living things, even bacteria. In the past ten thousand years of human history, there have been epidemics and pandemics of plague, smallpox, yellow fever, cholera […]

TimeWork Web Reloaded

TimeWork Web Reloaded Publication of my article, “The Ambivalence of Disposable Time: The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties at Two Hundred,” felt very much like the culmination of a 26-year long research project that began when I answered a call for proposals from the B.C. Ministry of Employment and Investment. My proposal included a research […]

A “Summer Rerun – The Victory of Privilege”

Yves Smith is back at Naked Capitalism, having been out for medical reasons. Angry Bear and I wish her well in recouping and rehabbing. An Introduction; At Naked Capitalism, Yves posted a commentary from September 2018 on the topic of “Privilege.” Intertwined with her experience as a child growing up in factory-dominated towns to what […]

Coronavirus dashboard for June 23: And so, it (the delta wave) begins

Coronavirus dashboard for June 23: And so, it (the delta wave) begins [Note: New home sales will be reported later this morning, and I will post on that report afterward.]There is now more evidence that the “delta” variant of COVID is taking hold in the unvaccinated regions of the country, and case counts are increasing […]