Tag Archives: Featured Stories

World wide, wearing masks prevented millions of hospitalizations and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. When vaccines became widely available, they prevented millions of hospitalizations and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Both could have saved many more lives, prevented many more hospitalizations but for opposition to masking and vaccination. So why were so many Americans opposed to the requiring of wearing masks and vaccination? “An...

War, Waste, and the Myth of Progress In the introduction to One-Dimensional Man, Herbert Marcuse listed four authors — Vance Packard, C. Wright Mills, William H. White, and Fred J. Cooks — whose works were of “vital importance” to his analysis. In the text, he mentioned “the affluent society” several times, which, of course, was the title of a famous book by John Kenneth Galbraith.  Galbraith, Mills, and White all cited Thorstein Veblen in...

No signs of the international political crisis creating any Western economic crisis at this point No important economic data today, and no significant COVID updates over the weekend. Let me make a few comments and then turn to the bond market, particularly as it reflects the international situation.I have no more insight into the Ukraine matter than probably any other well informed average citizen. It feels like the closest Russia and the US have...

Vladimir V. Putin Loses His Mind And Becomes A War Criminal Russian President Vladimir V. Putin has just announced a “special military operation” to “de-Nazify the Ukrainian government” so as to halt the supposed “genocide” being committed against Russian speakers in Ukraine.  There is not a shred of justification for any of this.  The extreme nationalist fascist groups in Ukraine do not support and are not part of the current Ukrainian...

Russia has just attacked Ukraine. US policymakers seem to agree that we should impose severe economic sanctions (but definitely have no US boots on Ukrainian ground). What can the US do without firing a shot ? I think the US can impose extreme costs on Russia (hurting Russians other than Putin who are not to blame and will be innocent victims — tough luck). In general sanctions have not achieved– well much except the defunct Iranian JCPOA....

The Minsky Moment In Eastern Ukraine  Oh, I cannot resist taking that phrase from a recent Economist article about the separatist Donbass republics, the Luhansk Peoples’ Republic (LPR), and the Donetsk Peoples’ Republic (DPR). The official recognition by V.V. Putin of their independence brings about the end of the Minsk II Accord negotiations that have been going on since 2015. These accords were supposed to bring peace to eastern Ukraine, but...

House price increases still strong, but clear deceleration from peak The Case Shiller and FHFA house price indexes were reporting this morning, covering the period through December. As you all know well, my mantra is that interest rates lead sales, and sales in turn lead prices. Here’s this month’s update. The monthly increase in the Case Shiller national index (violet) was 0.92%, and the YoY% increase was 18.3%. This is the 4th month of...

The current trend in both cases and deaths in the US has me the most hopeful I have been in over 6 months. Here’s why. Nationwide, cases have declined to 150,000, only 30,000 above their level just before The Omicron wave started, and about 10,000 less than their Delta peak: The Omicron wave has been almost completely symmetrical. Cases started to rise exponentially roughly on December 15. They peaked about 4.5 weeks later. Now, about 4.5...

There has been quite a lot of news over the past few years regarding agriculture specific to governmental assistance, from providing crop subsidies during the Trump Trade War to the Biden Administrations attempt to tamp down inflation via meat processing capacity increases, as well as an attempt to revive a few ideas that had been tabled by previous administrations. The largest focus for the USDA is without a doubt the SNAP food assistance program...

Real Wages Grew During Two Years of COVID-19 After Controlling for Workforce Composition Sean Howard, Robert Rich and Joseph Tracy February 15, 2022 I propose you just read it. They are quite convincing. The bottom line is that real wages increased last year (the top line is nominal wages and yes I like to take figures of speech literally) This is interesting for two reasons. First, the vast majority of our fellow citizens would...