Tag Archives: Hot Topics

Original Sin And Planes In The Air  The original sin of the current catastrophe in Ukraine was the failure of the US and UK to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine when Putin’s Russia seized control of Crimea as they promised to do in the Budapest Accord of 1994 when Ukraine gave up the third-largest stock of nuclear weapons in the world.  They are also now in violation of that Accord now by their weak effort to save...

War Comes to Kyiv | The New Yorker, Joshua Yaffa Interesting article that showed up in my inbox. This is a copy and paste ot it with minor editing. If you follow the link, there are other short articles to be read. I believe the takeaway from this article is the courage of Zelensky. The Ukraine will fall apart without him. Can the Russians be this bad militarily? The road into Kyiv is lined with military checkpoints, many of which are manned by...

RJS, Focus on Fracking, SPR at a 19 year low: total oil + products supplies, including SPR, at a 7 3/4 year low, distillate supplies at 26 month low Overall oil inventories finally rose after a million+ barrel per day jump in oil imports; commercial crude supplies saw their biggest increase since October 10th after pulling ~350k barrels per day out of the SPR, i.e. switching the deck chairs on the Titanic . . . other trends remained in...

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...

Recent New Yorker article, I read, “The Fight Within the American Medical Association“ What I found interesting is the AMA’s history in support and lack of it for better healthcare. It is going both ways while slowly advancing towards Single Payer. Out of necessity, the AMA has started to move closer to the reality of a Single Payer plan. Why now? Commercial healthcare insurance companies and Medicare Advantage are calling the shots on what...

RJS, MarketWatch 666, Producer Prices Rose 1.0% in January, but Annual Increases are Off the Record Highs The seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 1.0% in January, as average prices for finished wholesale goods rose 1.3% while final demand for services rose 0.7% . . . that increase followed a revised 0.4% increase in December, when average prices for finished wholesale goods fell 0.1%, while margins of final...

“Labour v capital in the post-lockdown economy,” The Economist. As prices and wages rise, are workers or firms winning? Pulling a brief article from The Economist. Unlike 2008, Labor is surviving due to stimulus packages in 2020/2021, which petered out in 2008 leaving low wages and restrictive Unemployment Benefits. “An economy-wide measure of corporate margins is rising fast. Dario Perkins of TS Lombard, a financial-services firm, breaks...

Summary Commenter RJS: US oil supplies at a 13 year low, SPR at a 19 year low: total oil + products supplies at a 7 1/2 year low, distillate supplies at 26 month low after refinery freeze off The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending February 11th indicated that after a big drop in our oil exports, a major slowdown in our oil refining due to...

Reading the first few paragraphs of Last War Brain by Noah Smith, I thought I would strongly disagree with his post and decided to write an attempted rebutal. I find that I agree almost 100% and can mainly complain about what I assert is a bit of bait and switch. As always I advise readers to just click the link. Noah is a much better writer than I am (low bar) so my effort to summarize and explain might best be skipped (skip to ***) Noah argues...

Introduction I am fortunate to have made the acquaintance of Kip Sullivan from reading his articles and exchanging notes over the last couple of years. He is one of the more knowledgeable authorities on Single Payer as well as healthcare costs and price, commercial healthcare insurance, Traditional versus Advantage Medicare, and why today’s healthcare is not working efficiently. For example, commercial insurance administration costs are an...