Tag Archives: Hot Topics

As Taken from Modern Healthcare: Scientists say Biden jumped the gun with booster plan | Modern Healthcare Scientists believe President Biden is jumping the gun by claiming people should be seeking a third shot, a booster shot of Covid vaccine. I am not sure which scientists the Modern Healthcare article is referring to; but, there are a bunch of doctors appearing to have issues with Biden’s booster plan. The issues require answering. Director...

July industrial production (good news) and retail sales (bad news still being pretty good news)  – by New Deal democrat This morning brought the July report for the King of Coincident Indicators, industrial production, as well as one of my favorite consumer side indicators, retail sales. Let’s take a look at each. Industrial sales increased strongly in July, up 0.9% overall, and the manufacturing component up 1.4%. Manufacturing production...

Retail Sales Fell 1.1% in July After May and June Sales were Revised Higher, R.J.S, MarketWatch 666 Seasonally adjusted retail sales were 1.1% lower in July after retail sales for May and June were revised higher . . . the Advance Retail Sales Report for July (pdf) from the Census Bureau estimated that our seasonally adjusted retail and food services sales totaled $617.7 billion during the month, which was 1.1 percent (± 0.5 percent) less than...

Accountable Care Organizations don’t cut costs. It’s time to stop the managed care experiment, STAT, Kip Sullivan and James G. Kahn August 23, 2021 Kip Sullivan is a member of the advisory board of Health Care for All Minnesota. James G. Kahn is emeritus professor of health policy at the University of California San Francisco. For the last half-century, Congress has endorsed essentially the same approach to cutting health care costs, an...

Economist-Farmer Michael Smith gives us a view of how serious the drought conditions are and the impact on the nations agriculture. Post after post of hydraulic shovels pulling orchards up in California, news of the large almond producers having to cull hundreds of acres at a time to divert water and resources to other parts of their farms. We saw the Midwest run hot and dry all summer and when harvest season arrived, monsoon rains made harvest...

July housing permits and starts: yellow flag for economy in 2022 Last month I noted that, from here on, the comparisons with 2020 in housing would become much more challenging. And so they have. While permits (gold in the graph below) did increase this month, their declining trend remains intact. Starts (blue), and more importantly, single-family permits (red, right scale) – the least volatile measure of all – both decreased again, as they...

Industrial Production Rose 0.9% in July After Prior Four Months Were Revised Higher, RJS at MarketWatch 666 The Fed’s G17 release on Industrial production and Capacity Utilization for July indicated industrial production rose by 0.9% in July after rising by a revised 0.2% in June and a revised 0.8% in May, and is now up 6.6% from a year ago . . . the industrial production index, with the benchmark now set for average 2017 production to equal to...

Prof. Joel Eissenberg: “Zoonotic origin for SARS-CoV-2 remains the most plausible hypothesis” There’s a saying in research science: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Given what we know about the origins of nearly all viral pandemics — that they resulted from a virus jumping from an animal to a human host (zoonotic infection)–the null hypothesis for the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic should be and was zoonotic. The competing...

A lot more intense economic commentary and detail coming by way of blogger and commenter R.J.S. MarketWatch 666 CPI Rose 0.5% in July on Higher Prices for Food, Energy, New Vehicles and Lodging The consumer price index rose 0.5% in July, as higher prices for food, energy, new vehicles, and lodging at hotels and motels and were only slightly offset by lower prices for car and truck rentals, vehicle insurance and health insurance . . ....

Commenter and Blogger Prof. Joel Eissenberg Beginning early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump, Fox and the right-wing GOP weaponized the disease to sow doubt about science and responsible behaviors. One of the narratives taking hold was that hydroxychloroquine was a cheap, easy and safe cure that scientists were hiding in order to profit from federal dollars for vaccine research.But in the fog of Trumpian fake news, it is easy to forget that there...