The Angry Bear

– by Bill McBride Calculated Risk Newsletter NOTE: The tables for active listings, new listings and closed sales all include a comparison to September 2019 for each local market (some 2019 data is not available). This is the third look at several early reporting local markets in September. I’m tracking over 40 local housing markets in the US. Some of the 40 markets are states, and some are metropolitan areas. I’ll update these tables...

The message can not get any clearer than what is being stated by CVS management. The discussion now being had is things will be better in 2025. Kind of doubtful as MedPac zeroes in on Medicare Advantage plans. I suspect more will be done to rein in MA plans. Read on and also the article. “Brown echoed Pearl, noting that a lot of CVS’ challenges come from Medicare Advantage, which touches Aetna, Oak Street Health and Caremark. In 2024, CVS made a...

 – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. As per the analysis of monthly data that I wrote about this week, hurricane season continued to complicate the high frequency data as well. With that very big caveat, the underlying tone remained positive. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the virtual moment as to the economic situation, and reward me a little bit for reporting and organizing...

I’ve been to California a few times, for scientific meetings, for vacation and once for a friend’s wedding. I’ve had a good experience each time. It has always struck me as an expensive place to live, though, and I’m definitely not a beach person.Elon Musk is warning us that the nation will become “Californicated” if Harris is elected. Considering that California’s per capita GDP has grown faster than the nation’s per capita GDP since at least 2011,...

Kind of have to jump around on this one. Both commentaries by Kareem are good. I just happen to like the Nationalism one better. Christian Nationalism is Here & People Can Now Communicate in Dreams (Really!) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar US elections 2024, The Guardian SUMMARY: Kamala Harris’s economic policies proved far more popular than Donald Trump’s plans in a blind test of their proposals. Four of the top five most popular proposals were...

Housing is expensive here in East Providence. It’s even more expensive in Boston, an hour from here. Some folks live in Rhode Island and commute to Boston. When we were house-hunting in the Providence area in the Spring of ’22, the real estate market was white hot. We were out-bid on three offers. Making an inspection a condition was an automatic reject. In the event, the house we bought never even went on the market.Over at jabberwocking.com, Kevin...

– by Sara B. Heller and Max Kapustin Econofact, November 2022 Let me be clear on the topic before you read the article. The full text is: “In a research  paper with colleagues, we find that it is possible by using data such as arrest and victimization records that cities already collect, to accurately identify specific people at high risk of being shot without introducing the kinds of racial bias that are of most concern in algorithmic...

– by New Deal democrat Much of the data that is being released, like yesterday’s jobless claims data, has to be viewed with an asterisk after it, because of hurricane disruptions. As an addendum to yesterday’s industrial production report, I failed to mention that the BEA that “the effects of two hurricanes subtracted an estimated 0.3 percent” from the total. Even with that increase, production would have been unchanged and manufacturing...

I’m reading an article about Kamala Harris in the October 21st New Yorker. This paragraph caught my eye:“When Harris talks of the origins of her interest in government, she lingers on a moment from her time in Montreal: a friend from Westmount High, Wanda Kagan, was being physically and sexually abused at home, and Harris’s mother took her in. “A big part of the reason I wanted to be a prosecutor was to protect people like her,” Harris has said. In...

Decoding Medicare Advantage by Andrew Sprung xpostfactoid Can STAT’s exposure of UHC’s exhortations to goose Medicare Advantage enrollees’ risk scores spur action to reduce MA overpayment? Load these Codes It is beyond reasonable doubt that the federal government’s payments to Medicare Advantage plans are grossly inflated by the plans’ gaming of the program’s risk adjustment system, designed to deter plans from cherry-picking health...