Here’s Where VP Pick Tim Walz Stands on Healthcare Issues, MedPage Today Presidential nominee Kamala Harris has chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) as her running mate. Here’s a look at Walz’s track record on healthcare. I am not going to call Kamala a Democrat although we all know she is of that political lean. I believe Kamala will represent all people including Republicans. Sixty-year-old Tim Walz was first elected Governor of Minnesota in...
Read More »Credit Conditions Improved, typical of an economy coming *out* of recession
Credit conditions in Q2 improved, and are typical of an economy having come *out* of a recession, not going in to one – by New Deal democrat The Senior Loan Officer Survey, the premier quarterly measure of the loose- or tight-ness of bank lending, was published yesterday for Q2. And since lending conditions are a long leading indicator for the economy, and several of the metrics contained in this release have a good and lengthy track record,...
Read More »A grim anniversary
Today is the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb. I grew up in Oak Ridge, TN, a city that was founded in secret for the purpose of enriching uranium for atomic bombs. The Hiroshima bomb was a uranium fission atomic bomb. The idea of immolating thousands of civilians was not novel at that point. See, e.g., the Dresden and Tokyo firebombings. Hiroshima was certainly a valid military target.One counterfactual argument is that, had the nuclear bombings...
Read More »Democrats and Maybe some Republicans in Congress Act to Rein in SCOTUS
Finally, some or most of Congress may do something to Rein in SCOTUS and the rogue Justices. The question here being can they nullify Congress’s act in some fashion. No Kings Act WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer introduced legislation Thursday reaffirming that presidents do not have immunity for criminal actions, an attempt to reverse the Supreme Court’s landmark decision last month. Schumer’s No Kings Act would...
Read More »Gene-based therapies: opportunity vs access
The advent of CAR-T and CRISPR technologies are set to revolutionize cancer and genetic disease therapies, respectively. But with great hope comes great costs. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that approximately 100,000 people in the US have sickle cell disease, making it the most prevalent inherited blood disorder. Remarkably, the new gene therapies offer very promising early efficacy: exa-cel and lovo-cel demonstrated 93.5%...
Read More »Politics & Prosecutions
by Joyce Vance Civil Discourse Tonight, the reporting is that Vice President Harris’ choice of running mate is down to Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania or Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota. Although Shapiro has a somewhat higher public profile because of his work taking on Trump and election deniers in court when he was the state’s attorney general, Walz has closed that gap in recent days. The more liberal of the two, he recently offered...
Read More »Another Black Monday?
by Robert Reich What really happened today on Wall Street First, a bit of personal history. Two weeks before October 19, 1987, I warned publicly that “in two weeks, the stock market will lose 20 percent of its value.” Then, on October 19, 1987, the S&P 500 had the biggest one-day fall in its history — dropping 20 percent. I was immediately deluged with letters and phone calls (no emails then) from people who wanted to sign up for my...
Read More »Some Angry Bear Updates
Two good commentaries coming up on Angry Bear as written by Joyce Vance and Robert Reich. Both are addressing what is going on with the economy or Black Monday (Reich) and the other by Joyce Vance and the Vice President choice and SCOTUS issues. Both are good commentaries. Got another on Covid which I am waiting on more Info from the authors. Prof. Heather is talking about the collapsing reality TV and politics. Been busy trying to take better...
Read More »Economy Still Barely in Expansion
Economically weighted ISM indexes show (and forecast) an economy still – barely – in expansion – by New Deal democrat As I was traveling last week, I did not write about several data series that I normally update. I plan on taking care of that this week. There’s also a little excitement in the markets today. Typically and when there has not been drastic *hard* news, the action is all about leveraged positions being unwound in disorderly...
Read More »Paul Davidson (1930-2024) and the founding of Post-Keynesian economics
Abstract: Paul Davidson was a critical figure in the preservation of John Maynard Keynes’s ideas, sticking with them when they were out of fashion. He was also key to the survival of the Post Keynesian school. Davidson endorsed Keynes’s liquidity preference theory of interest, and he emphasized fundamental uncertainty as a central feature of economic reality, essential to making sense of a monetary economy. His greatest legacy is the Journal of...
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