I really have to write about macroeconomics given the drama across the Channel in the UK. The story so far is that New Prime Minister Liz Truss and Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng have managed to spook money managers by threatening to cut their taxes . Kwarteng proposed a mini budget cutting the top marginal tax rate (etc). The Pound depreciated not quite reaching parity with the dollar (fell bellow 104 cents though) and the 10 year...
Read More »What News was in My In-Box
Kind of a mixed bag of what news was showing up in My In-Box. It was evenly spread amongst various topics. Ford building a battery plant just like everyone else is planning. Wall Street buying up residential homes. That purchasing of houses will come to no-good for the average citizen. ACA Preventive is under threat by a looney federal judge in Texas and SCOTUS has to decide. Non-Opioid pain treatment sounds like a good idea. If you do not like the...
Read More »Pharoah Sanders Has Passed
Pharoah Sanders Has Passed One of the greatest musical performances I ever saw live was in Spring 1966, sorry have not tracked down exact date, in the University of Wisconsin-Union theater. It was a live performance of the final group of John Coltrane. None of his great quartet from “A Love Supreme” were in it, but it still completely blew my mind. Somehow this group had another saxophonist besides the greatest of them ever, Coltane, this guy...
Read More »House price indexes: more evidence of a summer peak
House price indexes: more evidence of a summer peak – by New Deal democrat The Case Shiller and FHFA house price indexes were updated through July (technically, the average of May through July) this morning. Ordinarily I do not pay them too much mind, but this year they are very important in confirming a peak in house prices. Although the FHFA index is seasonally adjusted, the Case Shiller index is not, so the best way to show them in...
Read More »September 26, 2022, Letters from an American
This is a good one from Prof. Heather Cox-Richardson. It is along the lines of what I would consult in at various companies till I fixed it and was no longer needed. It is an update on what has happened in the United States. Something which has not occurred since pre-Reagan. The nations labor is being “valued” again. Peter Drucker: “Balance Sheets are meaningless. Our accounting systems are still based on the assumption that 80% of costs are...
Read More »Ted Cruz’s School Security Bills
Senate Democrats on a Wednesday back a while ago blocked two bills from Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas). The bills would be using COVID-19 stimulus funds to bolster school security and mental health resources for students. Sounds like a much -needed idea given past circumstances. Cruz’s proposals: The Securing Our Schools Act, which was cosponsored by Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), would double the number of police officers in public, charter, and...
Read More »Markups and profits skyrocket
Mike Konczal and Niko Lusiani at the Roosevelt Institute take a closer quantitative look at the sources of inflation the last two years: This research brief is the first to explore the size and distribution of markups (essentially the difference between sales and marginal costs) and profit margins across 3,698 firms operating in the US in 2021, reproducing and updating the analysis of Jan De Loecker, Jan Eeckhout, and Gabriel Unger’s The Rise of...
Read More »Measure and Regulate Embodied Carbon in Everything
I do not have an exact date when this was written. It appears to have been update May 2021. I find it interesting as US automakers are making moves to switch from combustion powered vehicles to electrically powered vehicles utilizing rechargeable batteries to provide the power. US automaker Ford is so committed to this conversion; it has split its company into two parts. One part for combustion driven vehicles and another for battery powered...
Read More »Open thread Sept. 23, 2022
Review of “Demagogue”
Review of “Demagogue”“Demagogue: The life and long shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy” by Larry Tye is a particularly timely read as the nation continues in the grip of another political bully, Donald Trump. The parallels in their methods are striking and the degree to which McCarthy held the nation in thrall during the 1950s mirrors the fealty of the Trumpenproletariat today. We know how the McCarthy story ended, and it offers hope that the nation will...
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