Tag Archives: Hot Topics

Look, Mike Johnson is a right-wing Christianist theocrat, but he did the right thing on Ukraine aid. I get it. This was partly a power play on his part to show that he, and not MTG, is in control of the House. And if the deal was that Democrats will vote against a motion to vacate in return, I’m OK with that transaction. Mike Johnson and the politics of compromise Tags: Mike Johnson, the politics of...

Visiting writer’s commentary on Sovereign Citizens by Infidel753 from his own Blog of similar name. Readers may be unfamiliar with the “sovereign citizen” movement, a fringe ideological belief system which asserts (for complex, fatuous, and extremely boring reasons) that certain everyday laws either do not exist, are not real laws, or at least don’t apply to individuals who assert some imaginary special status that makes them exempt. In...

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog The bifurcation of the new vs. existing home markets continued in March, per the report on existing home sales and prices yesterday. Remember that, unlike existing homeowners, house builders can vary square footage, amenities, lot sizes, and offer price and/or mortgage incentives to counteract the effect of interest rate hikes.On a seasonally adjusted basis, existing home sales declined from 438,000 to...

BBC and unknown author msn.com/BBC This kind of kool and interesting. An ancient lone wych elm whose remote Highland location has protected it from Dutch elm disease has been joined by dozens of seedlings for the first time in hundreds of years. The elm – dubbed the Last Ent of Glen Affric – was Scotland’s Tree of the Year in 2019. Ents are mythological tree creatures from fantasy writer JRR Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. They were the...

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog Industrial production, one of the premier series the NBER has historically used to declare recessions vs. expansions, has faded in importance since China was admitted to regular trading status in 1999. As you can see in the first graph below, both total and manufacturing production peaked in 2007. Further, manufacturing has continued to fade, as its post-pandemic peak has not equaled its 2010’s peak...

by Clare Pastore The Conversation A small city in Oregon with one homeless shelter is enforcing a local anti-camping law. Enforcing it against people sleeping in public using a blanket or any other rudimentary protection against the weather. Enforcing it even if there was nowhere else to go. By taking up City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, SCOTUS will decide whether it is unconstitutional to punish homeless people for doing in public the things...

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog There was a big decline in housing starts last month, and a smaller but significant decline in permits. Whether that signifies a change in trend or just noise is the issue. I lean towards the latter. To wit, in reaction to both January and Februarys’ housing construction report I wrote, “To signify a likely recession, units under construction would have to decline at least -10%, and needless to say,...

Most students who attend medical school in the US do so with student loans. Yes, some have military scholarships and some have wealthy parents, but most don’t. I’m guessing that most students reckon they’ll easily pay off the loans with the income that an MD or DO degree commands, and so far, they’ll be right.But the immensity of these loans has negative externalities. Here are two:1. It affects the residency choices of graduates. Students with large...

by Steve Roth Wealth Economics Matthew Klein and Joey Politano have been singularly responsible in their discussions of “excess saving” in the covid era — not least by always putting that term in “so-called” quotes. It’s saving in excess of what would have happened if pre-covid linear trends had continued (with the trend based on some chosen range of preceding quarters or years). It’s an estimate. Great. They sometimes also discuss the...

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog As per usual, real retail sales is one of my favorite indicators, because it gives so much information about the consumer, and since consumption leads employment, it helps forecast the trend in the latter as well. And the news this morning was good, as nominally retail sales increased 0.7% in March, while February’s number was revised higher by 0.3% to 0.9%. After accounting for 0.4% inflation in...