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

Covering Up The Coverup

Covering Up The Coverup I keep thinking that Fox News cannot get worse, but there seems to be no bottom to how low they can go.  New lows are being exhibited in their coverage of the current Senate impeachment trial.  They are fully involved in covering up the Trump administration coverup of what Trump did […]

Is Progressive Idealism Self-Defeating?

Like many liberals, I am encouraged by the new energy of progressives and the growing political support for progressive causes.  But I also share the common worry that the idealism of progressives is in danger of becoming self-defeating (see, e.g., Judis and Edsall for two recent discussions).  That’s a problem, because the stakes are high […]

Bloomberg’s Plan for Addressing Economic Inequality: not a wealth tax

Bloomberg’s Plan for Addressing Economic Inequality: not a wealth tax A bit ago (Jan 8, 2020), the New York Times described Michael Bloomberg’s plan1 for addressing the income and wealth inequality in the United States that has been a constant topic of discussion by Democratic candidates.  Briefly, as with the robber barons of Teddy Roosevelt’s […]

Catching up: November JOLTS report

Catching up: November JOLTS report Let me catch up on some data I didn’t examine last week: the November JOLTS report. It decomposes the jobs numbers into a number of metrics, but is less than 20 years old, so only covers one full business cycle, so is of limited forecasting use. To reiterate, here is […]

The Democratic Debate in Des Moines: progressive candidates on means testing versus universality

The Democratic Debate in Des Moines: progressive candidates on means testing versus universality Dana Chasin at 2020 Vision does a good job of encapsulating key issuesthat surface in the Democratic debates. Let’s get this out first:  most listeners will admit that the debates seem both too long and too short, as mentioned on Stephen Henderson’s […]

Rep Jayapal and Sen Sanders Have Introduced Medicare For All Bills: Part 2

Part 2 discusses why we must have the government issue payments to hospitals, clinics, etc. and also set the budgets for hospitals and this is how they are paid rather than billing multiple insurers and also patients. There is also only one payer. The later part is what I have been pounding on repeatedly. Forget […]

Majority Say Senate Should Remove Trump

EMichael: I don’t understand why people have such a hard time believing that there is no such thing as an “independent” voter. Sure, a lot of people register as an independent, but that certainly does not mean they vote for one party or the other depending on the candidates and/or circumstances. Plenty of studies have […]

Weekly Indicators for January 13 – 17 at Seeking Alpha

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for January 13 – 17 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The short term forecast has been volatile recently – and was again this week. As usual, clicking over and reading rewards me a little bit for the effort I put in