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

Manufacturing job losses now look virtually certain

Manufacturing job losses now look virtually certain I’ll have a post going up at Seeking Alpha later, but between a steep decline in the manufacturing work week, lackluster regional Fed manufacturing indexes (still barely positive), a turndown in durable goods orders (in part due to Boeing’s woes), and increasing inventories, it now looks nearly certain that […]

Democratic Presidential Candidates Addressing Maternal Healthcare

Back in April, I finished up an article for ConsumerSafety.Org called A Woman’s Right to Safe Healthcare Outcomes. The topics covered in this as given to me by ConsumerSafety.Org were Clinical Trials, Essure, and Maternal Mortality. All of the topics dealt with women’s healthcare. Of the three issues addressed, I found Maternal Mortality to be […]

Whither The Price Of Oil?

Whither The Price Of Oil? I do not know, which is a kind of silly way to start a post, but pretty obviously this is an opening to talk about some other matters, especially the US-Iran situation.  However, I want to point out some things  that have been on my mind.  In particular, while oil […]

New home sales: is housing developing a price “choke collar”?

New home sales: is housing developing a price “choke collar”? So, new single family home sales for May were reported light this morning: Because this series is very volatile and heavily revised, as always take this with a grain of salt. To smooth out some of the volatility, I pay more attention to the three […]

Kevin Drum Talking ’bout my generation

(Dan here…lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) Kevin Drum Talking ’bout my generation Kevin Drum has a funny but also genuinely interesting post on how boomers are not really to blame for messing up America (he half tongue in cheek blames the silent generation). I don’t think the defensiveness is entirely an act. He does concede Now, if you […]

New article in Shelterforce highlights EU state aid rules

New article in Shelterforce highlights EU state aid rules Greg LeRoy and I have written an article at Shelterforce explaining the basics of the European Union’s rules governing subsidies, or “state aid” in EU-speak. As the article is ungated, and regular readers will remember much of the detail, I will not quote it here. Suffice it to […]

A tale of two timeframes

A tale of two timeframes No data today Monday, so while we are waiting for new home sales tomorrow, let me step back a little and give you an updated overview of my thinking. It boils down to: the short term forecast — over the next 4 to 8 months — looks flat at best, […]

Supreme Court to hear cases over ACA risk-corridor funds

Supreme Court to hear cases over ACA risk-corridor funds “The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will take up cases over whether the federal government must pay billions of dollars to health insurers that sold coverage on the Affordable Care Act exchanges.” Letter to The Editor – Modern Healthcare Alert If you are going to […]