Labor market remains strong. Even so, the Fed should cut rates in September (EPI)

Two things are true right now for the U.S. economy: 

The labor market is extraordinarily strong when judged by any historical benchmark. 
The Federal Reserve is behind the curve in cutting interest rates and should start cutting rates at the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting next week. To aim for something like a federal funds rate that is at least two percentage points lower by mid-2025. 
These might strike some as being in tension, normally we want the Fed to cut interest rates to stimulate a weak economy. Why then, if the labor market is quite strong, do we need them to cut?  

Simply put, the interest rates the Fed controls are now at levels that

This is a good update as done by Prof. Heather Cox-Richardson at Letters from an American. As Prof. Heather writes, Trump is denying the reality of his failure(s) during the debate, He took the bait VP Kamala Harris laid out during the debate hook, sinker, line, and the pole. It was brutal to watch. And funny as Trump got a well-deserved comeuppance.

As I said Trump is in denial that he lost. Any offer for another debate with Harris is being pushed aside by Trump claiming he won the debate so why do it again?

Major event for Kamala Harris? Taylor Swift’s support for Kamala Harris. Apparently, many people registered to vote as a result. Read on . . .

~~~~~~~

Today, Trump backed out of another debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. He

An update on what is happening here is Arizona. There is more than just TSMC building in the Phoenix area. Intel has a couple of plants under construction also.

TSMC has good news as it looks to make chips in the U.S.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s production trials in Arizona are yielding results similar to its factories in Taiwan.

Trial production yields at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s factory in Arizona are reportedly similar to those in Taiwan, as it anticipates billions in funding.

The chipmaker’s yield rate, or the amount of functional chips it can produce per manufacturing process, at its first factory in Phoenix is similar to yield rates at comparable factories in Taiwan, Bloomberg reported, citing an

R.j. sigmund‘s notes on Covid Metrics

It appears all US Covid metrics are now heading down except for deaths, but we can expect deaths to head lower in a week or two as well, as the reduced numbers of those who are newly infected work through the health care system…among the CDC’s “early indicators” “test positivity”, or the percentage of tests for Covid that were positive, fell to 16.3% during the week ending August 31st, after test positivity  for the week ending August 24th was revised down to 16.7% from the 17.0% reported a week ago . . . at the same time, Covid cases accounted for 2.3% of hospital emergency room patients during the week ending August 31st, down from a unrevised 2.5% of emergency patients during the week ending August 24th;

A federal judge in Louisiana declares a state can not use race as a reason to reject a project which may cause pollution. Stating “’Pollution does not discriminate,’ and that if a regulating authority had to consider race in its enforcement decision making, it will ‘indeed participate in racism.’”

The new ruling bars Louisiana from considering whether to permit industrial facilities in communities already facing a disparate impact from pollution.

Louisiana federal court permanently blocks civil rights protections for Black communities’ statewide.

by Terry L. Jones

flood light news

The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana this week issued a permanent injunction that prevents the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

A relatively long piece on Carbon Capture by Vox. It does touch on every topic concerning capture and storage.

Oil companies sold the public on a fake climate solution — and swindled taxpayers out of billions

by Amy Westervelt

Vox

This spring, Democrats wrapped up a nearly three-year investigation into the fossil fuel industry’s role in climate disinformation and asked the Department of Justice to pick up where they left off. In House and Senate Democrats’ final report and hearing, investigators concluded that major oil companies had not only misled the public on climate change for decades, but also were continuing to misinform them about the industry’s preferred climate “solutions”— particularly biofuels and carbon capture.

Sen.

This is a brief introduction to the housing state of affairs in Arizona. It is building up quickly. Builders, declarants, and corporate HOAs have a great swath of control over what is occurring. None of which has controlling input from residents. What I am also seeing in the Planning and Zoning Commissions is ignorance on how these developments should be dealt with regard to lot sizes, roads, etc. They are more of a rubber stamp. These communities are being built with little regard for supporting infrastructure.

I also wonder if water resources will sustain such growth. As Angry Bear presented here: “Water in Arizona is an Important Resource. Much of Its Use is by Out of State Corporations, Angry Bear,” I wonder how much we are drawing out of the

Indeed, everything Postmaster DeJoy has done has slowed the USPS even more . . .

USPS plans rural slowdown after election to cut costs, The Washington Post (archive.ph)

Top U.S. Postal Service officials are considering plans to allow slower mail delivery in the coming months for long-distance and rural service to cut costs at the financially troubled agency — but not until after the election.

The changes would give customers within 50 miles of the Postal Service’s largest processing facilities faster delivery service, which accounts for the vast majority of mail and packages, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told The Washington Post. But the agency cannot afford to maintain the same model for deliveries into far-flung areas, he said. That

Much of this is the result of commercial healthcare gaming the system with pricing. Medicare Advantage can not compete head-to-head with Traditional Medicare much less the VA. VA sent me to Barrows (Arizona) for an issue with my back and right leg. I was going numb and it was painful to walk.

So to make up for just giving me epidural shots in my spine (surgeon’s suggestions), they decide to work on my blood pressure, cholesterol, and weight. They wanted another comprehensive blood test even though I had one two months earlier. Said no to it all. My cholesterol and blood pressure is far better than average. I dropped 24 pounds and still decreasing. The word for all of this is “Coding” the patient so Medicare and the VA pays more for it. I still

By Garry George

Audubon

The goal of conservation is to protect biodiversity and prevent species from disappearing. We often associate this work with the maintenance of natural areas, but Audubon’s science shows that bird populations are feeling impacts of climate change even in protected places like wildlife refuges. As just one example, Burrowing Owls are projected to lose 14% of their current range if the average global temperature increases by 3 degrees Celsius. Unless we can reduce pollution and slow the rate of warming, many bird species will face extinction due to factors like range loss and sea level rise.  

That’s why climate action is conservation and why clean energy is key to saving billions of birds. Rooftop solar and microgrids

I did some rewriting on this particular commentary and added two charts from another commentary (at the bottom). The point being to give graphical depiction of the impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and who it benefited the most. You can see (for whatever reason) why the Republican Party is pushing for this and taking it from Medicaid. You can also wonder why less wealthy Republicans making far less than the major beneficiaries are not up in arms. The charts are very telling amongst Park’s verbiage.

GOP Pushes to Make Trump Tax Cuts Permanent Makes Medicaid Top Target for Draconian Cuts.

by Edwin Park

Center For Children and Families,

Edwin Park has been writing about the many conservative and Congressional Republican plans and

Interesting and brief piece by Dean Baker of CEPR in relation to price gouging.

There continues to be a debate about the extent to which “price-gouging” or “greedflation” has been responsible for the rise in prices since the pandemic. We can debate the extent to which companies were able to take advantage of monopoly power during the pandemic. Whatever the cause, it is clear the profit share of corporate income has risen from before the pandemic (shown in the graph below).

Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis.

In the four quarters before the pandemic, the profit share averaged 22.7 percent of the net income generated in the corporate sector.[1] It rose to 26.6 percent in the second quarter of 2022. Since then, it fallen back somewhat to

If this is going to be a close election between trump and Kamala Harris, I will be surprised, Trump just keeps babbling away with his commentaries. Taken from the reports I have read, the audience coming out to hear him speak, have been leaving early. The more desperate trump gets, the more he babbles.

It will be interesting to see who shows up for the debate. The babbler or a thinking (if such can be done) trump.

Enoy the read.

September 7, 2024

by Prof. Heather Cox Richardson

Letters from an American

By rights, tonight’s post should be a picture, but Trump’s behavior today merits a marker because it feels like a dramatic escalation of the themes we’ve seen for years. Please feel free to ignore—as I often say, I am trying to leave

The one element we lack at Angry Bear is regular woman commenters and/or a woman writer. I have searched and asked. Explained it does take time and you are exposed to silly or rude comments. It is a different perspective coming from women. A perspective I can not present.

Angry Bear has Annie’s permission to present her words at Angry Bear. This is a good commentary by Annie as taken from her site “annieasksyou.”

Looking Toward Tuesday’s “Debate” Between the Prosecutor and the Felonious Traitor

by Annie

annie asks you . . .

In my title for this post, “Looking Toward” does not mean “Looking Forward to.”

I wish VP Harris did not have to face Trump, inevitably elevating him by her presence. (There’s still a chance he’ll invent a

It is an accurate rant and depicts what I see on the highway.

I see much of this in Arizona where we live today. An explosion of oversized vehicles which typically do not carry anything but people. As one planning commissioner said to the builders, sixty percent of the vehicles being driven in southern Arizona are pickups. The implication here was driveways must be long enough to accommodate them so they do not block a sidewalk. And then, do the behemoths fit in the garage and allow for doors to be opened without banging a wall or the other vehicle next to it.

The dynamics of driving a large vehicle differ greatly from a standard automobile. They use more fuel, take longer time and more distance to stop, cause more wear on the roads, take up

This report by Employ America was written the day before the Unemployment report was released on the 6th. There is another link to a report on Indeed at the end of this report. It too makes for an interesting tead.

The good news from the August jobs report is the labor market is not weakening as quickly as July’s shaky report would have you believe. The bad news is the labor market’s strength is slowly fading. Time is a-wasting for the Fed to take action. Employ America

Sufficient Conditions (Exist) For Frontloading Interest Rate Cuts

We see two individually sufficient conditions for the Fed to proceed with a frontloaded interest rate cut in September above 25 basis points: either (1) the unemployment rate is 4.2% or above, or (2) the

Been lucky to have Andrew Sprung of xpostfactoid writing on the topic of perpetrators conceiving, executing, and expanding their carefully planned scheme of large-scale unauthorized plan-switching amongst ACA healthcare insurance subscribers. In the end, people switched over to other plans get lesser healthcare insurance than what they had signed up for initially with a different plan. The plan switch generates a bonus for the person selling a plan and making the switch. Fraud would be the descriptor for this.

TrueCoverage and Enhance Health were using “leads” developed by Minerva Marketing using online ads misrepresenting ACA premium subsidies as cash benefits. And of course, people see the word money go with the flow thinking they will come away

More on the FTC investigating Albertsons and Kroger as to whether they are truly competitors. The issue being how much of the market-controlled now by each and what would result after Kroger acquires Albertsons.

Both the FTC and Unions argue “FTC argues different stores have different use cases. FTC lead attorney Susan Musser noted “you can’t just get a single avocado at a Costco, while the union pointed out that many stores, unlike Kroger and Albertsons, don’t sell proteins like meat and chicken, and that customers in poor areas may be limited to a store like Dollar General that “only sells Slim Jims” for meat.”

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‘Eat our dust Kroger:’ FTC and the grocery giants debate who real competitors are, Boise Dev

PORTLAND, OR — In a warm

A brief introduction by an Econofact News Letter exploring the impact of income on voting turnout. I did not include the explanation link information in this commentary as it would be too lengthy. However, the links are there if you wish to read further into this explanation. This is short enough to provoke a discussion as to why percentages of poorer voters do not turnout for elections. They have much to win in economic progress if the vote for the right candidate. If they do not vote, then they take whatever the other candidate offers. A bit of a rewrite also.

See if this makes sense. I think it may . . .

Election Day is less than two months away

Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2022

Table 7. Reported Voting and

CNBC

The plight of hotel workers in cleaning up after residents who stay for a few days and leave the room in a wreck. The pay id the minimum that can be made. The hazards are such a worker can become readily sick. from exposure. I am sure the pandemic caused issues.

Plus, people do not tip the housekeeping staff. A couple of $dollars left on a night stand goes a long way. Another story on the plight of housekeepers which are mostly women.

With up to 17 rooms to clean each shift, Fatima Amahmoud’s job at the Moxy hotel in downtown Boston sometimes feels impossible.

Daily Cleaning Schedule

There was the time she found three days’ worth of blond dog fur clinging to the curtains, the bedspread and the carpet. She knew she wouldn’t finish

Last week CEO Vivek claimed most of his text messages were automatically deleted. Also and previously investigators were show messages going back and forth between players in this issue. Investigators asked those messages be kept. Apparently, those too have disappeared or portions of them have.

It appears Albertsons has been milked by private entities Cerberus and Apollo who have been taking portions of equity out of Albertsons. In which case Kroger would be the white knight to the rescue.

FTC questions Albertsons CEO on deleted text messages, Boise Dev

PORTLAND, OR — Albertsons CEO Vivek Sankaran testified during a hearing in Portland about an unknown number of text messages he caused to be deleted.

Sankaran was one of several

New Medicaid Rule Adds Fuel to The Fire of Commercial Hospital Price Inflation, Health Affairs Opinion Piece

Hospital services prices grew faster than any other sector of the US economy. To address the underpayment of hospitals by Medicaid, the federal government issued a regulation correcting the underpayment of hospitals. However, the issue of higher prices and Medicaid paying more to correct the underpayment does not fit in the opinion of The National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions. The outcome of doing so under the new regulation could push hospital prices higher for 66 percent of the US population who have commercial health insurance coverage.

Growing evidence of the cause of hospital price variation shows such is the result of

– by Infidel753

Infidel753 Blog

By traditional assessment, in a US election year, early September is when the broad American public starts turning its attention to the choice looming in early November.  To those readers blessed to live in normal countries, where campaigning is limited by law to just three or four weeks before an election, a two-month political season probably seems absurdly long — but I can assure you, the media and parties here have already been barraging us with election stuff for what feels like an eternity.  As far back as late May, we had already been so interminably inundated that 62% of Americans were feeling burned out on politics and sick of hearing about it.

Nevertheless, here we are.  Two more months of this to

Devastating Impact of Proposed Kroger/Albertsons Merger on Good Union Jobs Scrutinized in Day 3 of Merger Hearing, Economic Liberties

Portland, OR — After the third day of the Federal Trade Commission v. Kroger-Albertsons hearing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, the American Economic Liberties Project released the following summary. As posted by Research Manager Laurel Kilgour, reporting from Portland of the key arguments made and points discussed.

Union Regrets Believing Albertsons’ Past Promises About Divested Stores
Andrea Zinder, President of UFCW Local 324 in Southern California, which represents over 15,000 workers across a wide range of industries, testified that following Albertsons’ 2015 merger with Safeway, their

Two in five Americans have outstanding health care bills, according to the Kaiser Foundation. Those with payments overdue are more likely to be uninsured, low-income, and either Black or Hispanic. What’s more, the total amount of outstanding medical debt in the United States is much bigger than people think.

~~~~~~~

Most states have not yet enacted laws preventing the accrual of medical debt, but many have implemented protections for people who already have accumulated debt. In light of this . . .

Earlier this summer, the Biden administration announced updated guidance on medical debt. In addition to a proposed federal rule to prevent medical bills from being included in credit reports, the administration recommended that states take action

We have shopped at both stores and also Frys which is also a part of Kroger. Of the three, Ftys is less costly. Our Frys always seems to be out of product. We end up at Bashas to fill out the rest of or grocery shopping, or Sprouts which has excellent veggies, or make the trip to WalMart which is on the other side of town. In any case, you will not save much. They all know what the other is charging.

The real issue is, when there is a shortage, do your cost really go up or are you just taking advantage? That is the issue and one which should be hammered home every time as economic problem occurs.

~~~~~~~

During the Antitrust Trial, a Kroger Exec Admits It Jacked Up Milk and Egg Prices Above Inflation

A top Kroger executive admitted under

Biden-Harris Admin awards $100 Million to navigators to help Americans sign up for healthcare coverage

by Charles Gaba

ACA Signups

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The Biden-Harris Administration today continued its historic investment in health care coverage and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by awarding a new round of $100 million to organizations vital to helping underserved communities, consumers, and small businesses find and enroll in quality, affordable health coverage through HealthCare.gov, the Health Insurance Marketplace®.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is awarding the grants, in advance of this year’s Marketplace Open Enrollment (which begins November 1, 2024) to 44 Navigator grantees in states using HealthCare.gov. The grants

By Prof. Heather Cox Richardson

Letters from an American

Almost one hundred and forty-two years ago, on September 5, 1882, workers in New York City celebrated the first Labor Day holiday with a parade. The parade almost didn’t happen: there was no band, and no one wanted to start marching without music. Once the Jewelers Union of Newark Two showed up with musicians, the rest of the marchers, eventually numbering between 10,000 and 20,000 men and women, fell in behind them to parade through lower Manhattan. At noon, when they reached the end of the route, the march broke up and the participants listened to speeches, drank beer, and had picnics. Other workers joined them.

Their goal was to emphasize the importance of workers in the

This appears to be similar to what I wrote about recently, An A1 Price Fixing Dream. You Know It’s There. But You Can’t Prove It. – Angry Bear. You have an entity collecting information, categorizing it, and then supplying the information to other entities so they can set pricing. In this case with meat and poultry, it may not be as sophisticated. Agri Stats, the data and consulting company collects competitive information and passes the information to the meat processing industry. They in turn fix their prices to similar levels.

~~~~~~~

Meat and Poultry Is Wildly Expensive Now — and It Could Be Due to Price Fixing, Food and Wine

Agri Stats, the data analytics and consulting company, unlawfully collected competitive industry data.  If the

Arizona has plenty of roadside attractions, but these eight are undoubtedly the weirdest.

Arizona is known for its impressive natural wonders. It is also home to a treasure trove of quirky and offbeat roadside attractions that offer a different kind of adventure for those willing to take the road less traveled.

These eight unusual stops range from the downright bizarre and whimsically charming to historical symbols and pop culture references, making them perfect detours for curious travelers looking to add a bit of oddity to their journey. So buckle up and get ready to explore the strange side of the Grand Canyon State.

1. Flintstones Bedrock City, Williams 

“Flintstones, meet the Flintstones” — yes, you can take the lyrics of this