The Angry Bear

Where we are in the Conversation VBP: I had stopped the dialogue on Kip Sullivan’s paper Medicare’s “Value-Based Payment (VBP)” programs are Failing on page 3 of 12 pages so as to detail it as much as possible and breaking this portion out for readers. It can be reviewed here. This part of Kip’s paper gets to the root of why Value-based rewards to Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNFs) will not work. It is also detailing why Value Based Payments...

 by New Deal democrat Why Yesterday’s CPI report was so important As promised, here is a link to my article, Why Yesterday’s CPI Report was such a Big Deal, over at Seeking Alpha. I go into a great deal of detail parsing the report, particularly with regard to how the huge increase in house prices as has been recorded by both the Case Shiller and FHFA house price indexes, is now bleeding over into “owner’s equivalent rent,” the CPI’s...

Nobody is (still) getting laid off [Note: This Nov. 10th consumer inflation report was very important, and not in a good way. So I plan on doing a more extensive post on it tomorrow, and I’ll probably put off the next “Coronavirus Dashboard” by Friday.] Initial claims declined another 4,000 this week to 267,000, and the 4-week average declined 7,250 to 278,000, both new pandemic lows: For the past 50 years, initial claims have only been at...

Producer price inflation: it’s a gas! I normally do not pay much attention to producer prices, but with the huge increase in spending earlier this year and the ensuing supply bottlenecks taking center stage, the course of inflation has emerged as the most pressing economic issue. To recap briefly, with the second round of pandemic stimulus checks early this year, retail spending increased over 10% between last October and this past March; and...

‘Brutus,’ the anti-Federalist to presciently foresaw the Imperial Supreme Court As you may recall, for the past several years I have done a great deal of historical reading about Republics; how they were structured, what were their strengths and weaknesses, whether they were able to last a long time, and whether they were consistent with “empire”-sized dominions. One of the revelations of that excursion was realizing that the US...

Others are calling October at 8.6% equal to September’s record, but adding additional decimal points shows October +8.6265% clearly higher than September’s +8.5931% “Record 8.6% Annual Increase in October Producer Price Index; Record 14.2% Increase for Final Demand Goods, and a 46 year Record for Prices of Intermediate Goods,” RJS, MarketWatch 666 The seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 0.6% in October, as...

Infrastructure week: organs of the human brain, created by the human hand Who owns general social knowledge? Who owns the general intellect? Alf Hornborg pointed out that without the fuel to run it, a tractor is simply a piece of sculpture. It is not even a sculpture, though, if there is no one to design it and build it and operate it, let alone to design and manufacture the tools needed to build the tractor and so on. Marx’s list of things...

Farmer and Economist Michael Smith In this AgDaily piece, they do a great job of outlining the history of agriculture and sort of where it is headed, pretty much the same as it always has been, with a few caveats.  Over time it has gotten much harder and now even more so with equipment prices up a little over 9% in just the past couple of years. Farm Machinery Cost Estimates for 2021 – AgFax This doesn’t seem to be ending any time soon....

Sesame Street’s Big Bird Gets a Covid Vaccination After Sesame Street’s Big Bird tweeted that he received the COVID-19 vaccine, Sen. Ted Cruz and other right-wing media figures criticized the character for promoting “propaganda” to children. Sesame Street launched a promotional campaign during the past week after the COVID-19 vaccine was authorized for ages 5-11, according to Insider. Big Bird@BigBird I got the COVID-19 vaccine today!...