Tag Archives: Featured Stories

Oil prices hit 7 year high, natural gas hits 14 year high on largest one day price jump on record; natural gas supplies see largest draw this winter, Focus on Fracking, RJS Oil prices rose for a sixth straight week and eclipsed the 7 year high hit last week on heightened tension over Ukraine, tight supplies, and perceptions of rising demand…after rising 2.2% to $85.14 a barrel last week on supply disruptions in the Middle East and on rising...

Lambert at Naked Capitalism has an interesting article up as taken from KHN entitled “I Write About America’s Absurd Health Care System. Then I Got Caught Up in It” as detailed by Bram Sable-Smith. As taken from the KHN article, Bram describes the beginnings of his dilemma of getting Insulin: “I’d been waiting since September for an appointment with an endocrinologist in St. Louis; the doctor’s office couldn’t get me in until Dec. 23 and...

On the retirement of Justice Breyer: is this any way to run a country? Long long ago I remember reading that Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall, both about 70 years old at the time, decided not to retire during the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, because he was not liberal enough, preferring to wait for the next, more left-wing Democratic President. Heh!   Liberals got lucky when, upon Brennan’s retirement in 1990, David Souter was...

WSJ reports Stocks rose broadly Thursday morning after the GDP report, but they retreated later in the day, with the Nasdaq falling 1.4%, the S&P 500 dropping 0.54%, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average off 0.02%.Thursday’s report contained warning signs. Most of the growth owed to companies’ restocking rather than people and firms buying stuff. In part, the rise in inventory investment reflected a rebound from super-low inventory levels in...

Real personal income and spending both decline in December; no imminent worry but evidence of softening Nominal personal income rose 0.3% in December, while spending declined -0.6%. In real terms after inflation, personal income declined -0.1%, and personal consumption expenditures declined -1.0%. Nevertheless, both remain well above their pre-pandemic levels:  Here is what the same information looks like using May 2021 as a baseline, after...

Here is what Biden said about omicron in December: “We’re looking ahead to a brighter and happier December,” Mr. Biden said on Wednesday. He ticked through a list of actions by his administration that he said would help ensure fully stocked shelves in groceries and retailers through the holidays.Asked by reporters if he was worried that the Omicron variant, which officials announced later in the day had been detected in California, would threaten...

Usually, discussions of decarbonizing energy production involve solar, wind, tidal and geothermal. But nuclear power generation doesn’t generate greenhouse gas (though the large amount of concrete in conventional nuclear power plants does). Nuclear power generation has a bad name after Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. While there is debate about whether the Three Mile Island and Fukushima accidents really endangered many lives, there’s no...

Fox News and white grievance In his recent book “Kill Switch,” Adam Jentleson, a former aide to the late Senator Harry Reid, persuasively argues that the Senate filibuster arose by accident when a rule revision in 1805 failed to include the “previous question” resolution, which would require a vote on the issue pending because it was thought superfluous. He also shows by overwhelming evidence that for the past 200 years, by far the single most...

November JOLTS report: imagine, if you will, a game of musical chairs, New Deal democrat Imagine a game like musical chairs, except that some players are the chairs (employers) as well as people who want to sit in the chairs (potential employees), and players, both sitters and chairs, are continually entering and exiting the game. The game would be in equilibrium if the number of sitters and chairs are always equal. If there are more...

Agricultual Economist and Farmer Michael Smith, Sherman Act, Part 2: The Small Farmer Pitchfork Army Most are now aware of the Biden Administrations recent announcement and press briefing for a plan to combat prices in the meat industry. If not, you can find a bit of information here:  Readout of President Joe Biden’s Event with Farmers, “Ranchers on his Action Plan for a More Competitive Meat and Poultry Supply Chain“ And you can also see...