The Angry Bear

Healthcare and the Environment appear to be the issues talked about in this installment of links. It was pretty clear this week in what showed up in my In-Box. Two of the topics I marked and suggesting you might read them. One is Healthcare Insurance Claim denial. The other is Solar Panel efficiency. I am not surprised healthcare insurance is denying claims because they can. The longer they can delay a payout the more money they make. The...

October JOLTS report shows continued deceleration in jobs market, with continuing gap in job openings filled  – by New Deal democrat For the past year, I have likened the jobs market to a game of reverse musical chairs, where there are more chairs than players. Some chairs are always left empty. The chairs are jobs, and the players are job seekers. Since the lowest paying jobs have always been left empty, there is tremendous pressure to raise...

“November 29, 2022,” Letters from an American, Prof. Heather Cox Richardson Today, after an eight-week trial and three days of deliberations, a jury of five women and seven men found Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, 57, the founder and leader of the right-wing Oath Keepers gang, and Kelly Meggs, 53, who led the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers, guilty of seditious conspiracy and other charges related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol....

– by New Deal democrat House price indexes continue to show the top is in The FHFA and Case Shiller house price indexes were reported this morning, with both continuing to show that the peak in house prices took place during the summer. For the month, the seasonally adjusted FHFA index rose +0.1%, vs. a +0.9% increase one year ago, and following two months of -0.6% and -0.7%, respectively. The Case Shiller national index declined -0.5%,...

Just doing a review of the potential strike being by railroad workers. To sum up the issue(s), proposed wage increases barely keep up with inflation, health care premiums nearly doubling, and a lack of paid sick days in the agreement. It doesn’t sound like that much of a big deal. More in a bit. In recent years, railroads reduced the workforce by 30%. Or, a smaller workforce is moving more freight. Smaller workforce results in less Overhead and...

by Joseph Joyce The Struggle for Hegemony The restrictions by the Biden administration on the sale of semiconductor chips and the equipment to manufacture them represent a new stage in the division between China and the U.S. The belief that increased trade would lead to a convergence of Chinese and U.S. interests faded years ago. The history of globalization shows clearly that the chances of Chinese as well as Russian acceptance of a liberal...

New home sales adjusted for cancellations: still signs that a bottoming process might be taking place by NewDeal democrat I had a correspondent question me about whether new home sales might actually be in the process of bottoming, due to the big increase in the percentage of cancellations, as shown below (via Bill McBride): This is something I’ve been aware of, and commented on one month ago in the context of housing that was permitted but...

Ever since the COVID mRNA vaccines (Moderna and Pfizer) proved themselves, I became convinced they are the future of viral vaccines. Looks like a polyvalent flu vaccine is in the works that may obviate annual strain-specific vaccines.“In this work, we developed a nucleoside-modified messenger RNA (mRNA)–lipid nanoparticle vaccine encoding hemagglutinin antigens from all 20 known influenza A virus subtypes and influenza B virus lineages. This...

Medicare Advantage Over Payments In the conclusive summation of the latest KFF report on Medicare Advantage Healthcare plans which KFF also has in place, is this: Historically, one goal of the Medicare Advantage program was to leverage the efficiencies of managed care to reduce Medicare spending. However, the program has never generated savings relative to traditional Medicare. In fact, the opposite is true. As a result, Medicare Advantage...