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

Decline in continuing claims, stability in initial claims suggest downward pressure on the unemployment rate

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog Initial claims in the last week rose 9,000 to 221,000, while the four week moving average increased 2,750 to 214,250. With the usual one week lag, continuing claims declined 19,000 to 1.791 million: On the more important YoY% basis for forecasting purposes, initial claims are up 2.3%, while […]

What happened in Richmond won’t stay in Richmond: OIG audits the first RPDC

by Steve Hutkins Save the Post Office AB: I have been involved in multiple, many, etc. systems implementations over the years. They need careful upfront planning with users to understand what may work best and have a foundation in mind before you move forward with an implementation. PG Louis DeJoy has never worked in a […]

What Social Security isn’t

There has always been a lot of misinformation and frank dishonesty surrounding Social Security. Here are three things that Social Security isn’t: 1. A retirement investment. Social Security is insurance. It is not meant to be your sole source of income after retirement (although for many Americans, it basically is). Social Security is not a […]

Does consumer sentiment correlate with the real economy?

 – by New Deal democrat “it should be no surprise that Biden’s poll numbers have recently improved.” No big economic news today, so let me update a correlation with information from last Friday’s personal income data. To wit, is consumer sentiment about the economy tied to any real metric? With a lot of noise, it does […]

Tobacco without smoking

When I was in college, I took up pipe smoking. I particularly enjoyed Turkish Latakia tobacco and Native Cigarettes, smoked through a long-stemmed church warden clay pipe. But shortly after I got married, my wife told me to stop. Smoking is a particularly dangerous nicotine delivery system. Nowadays, there is vaping, which some see as […]

Commercial Health Insurance Practices Delay Care and Increase Costs

Brief recital of the costs and efforts of hospitals getting reimbursed by commercial healthcare insurance. It appears to be worsening. And the efforts to collect are costly. A Survey of Healthcare Insurance Practices Survey Methodology – 304 respondents, representing 772 hospitals, completed the survey. Not every respondent answered each question. All respondents are members of […]

Michigan Activist John Sinclair Dies at 82

by Christina Clark Iconic Detroit writer and activist John Sinclair died on Tuesday morning at the age of 82 after spending two weeks at DMC Detroit Receiving Hospital for declining health. His cause of death was congestive heart failure, his publicist told the Detroit News.  An advocate for his art, Sinclair served as the manager for […]

February JOLTS report: soft landing-ish? – except for a noisy jump in layoffs

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog The JOLTS report for February showed stabilization or slight improvement to all but one of its components, generally suggesting, well, stabilization in the overall jobs market. Starting with the monthly changes, job openings (blue in the graph below), a soft statistic that is polluted by imaginary, permanent, and […]