Tag Archives: Hot Topics

Job and Wage Growth Surge in January Center for Economic and Policy Research, Dean Baker I believe this report by Dean Baker to be a bit premature. If you are keeping up with New Deal democrat, he cites reasons why this still can go either way at this point. One reason is the Fed’s foot still on the brake. Another is manufacturing workweek is practically screaming “recession.” And U6 underemployment rate increased again. We could be near the...

McDonald’s wants to win back low-income consumers, Laura Bratton @ QUARTZ US customers making less than $45,000 stayed away in 2023. That could continue this year, executive says . . . McDonald’s chief financial officer Ian Borden told investors Monday (Feb. 5) that he’s looking for ways to win back the low-income customers the company lost last year. US consumers whose incomes fall below $45,000 are really important to the fast food...

The Senior Loan Officer Survey makes an important turn   – by New Deal democrat The Senior Loan Officer Survey is a long leading indicator, telling us about credit conditions that typically turn worse a year or more before the economy turns down, and improve just at the economy is ready to turn up. The one downside is that the information is only reported Quarterly, and with a one a one month lag. Which is a way of saying that data for Q4 of...

Employers’ hiring rate fell sharply in 2023, Zhao said. And workers are quitting less. Fewer people are changing jobs. Business Insider. And Jobs are hard to find even with low Unemployment. Open Thread February 2 2024 federal judge tosses disinformation superspreader Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s lawsuit, Angry Bear ...

This is a good recital by the GAO on Food Prices, its trends, factors affecting it, and how the government plays a role in it. It covers quite a bit of territory on costs and prices pre-2021 and 2021 to 2022. It was those two years when Covid was having an impact on the nation and globally. The impact came in getting food to market, processing it, and making it available. If have some time to review this report, I believe you will come away with...

Weekly Indicators for January 29 – February 2 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. One week ago many of the high frequency indicators hit an “air pocket.” This week some – but not all! – resolved. At present there is one of the more anomalous situations I have observed. Most of the data is not just positive, but frequently strongly so. On the other hand, there is a nagging minority...

My dad died a few years ago with dementia. The diagnosis was Frontotemporal Lobe Dementia (FTD), based on a psychiatric evaluation and brain imaging. After he died, we had a brain autopsy done, which returned a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease. So which was it? As far as I know, it could be both. But what this little anecdote illustrates is the tension between diagnosis of dementia in a living patient and the use of histopathological diagnostic...

Originally published at Benzinga Biden The Master Oil Trader Part III? President Refills Emergency Stash as Crude Price Slides – United States Oil Fund, Benzinga, Aaron Bry, Editor. ~~~~~~~~ The Biden administration has been slowly replenishing stocks in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) as oil prices fell in the fourth quarter, buying crude at prices that could rate the president as an oil trading legend. The SPR is an emergency...

U.S. winning world economic war, axios.com, Neil Irwin. The United States economy grew faster than any other large, advanced economy last year, by a wide margin, and is on track to do so again in 2024. Why it matters: America’s outperformance is rooted in its distinctive structural strengths, policy choices, and some luck. It reflects a fundamental resilience in the world’s largest economy that is easy to overlook amid the nation’s...

Last September, Kennedy—who has lambasted social media platforms’ attempts to contain his fact-free rants about vaccines as unforgivable infringements on free expression—brought suit in New Hampshire to squelch a blogger who posted anonymously on the Daily Kos website about a speech that the late Sen. Robert Kennedy’s son delivered in Berlin to a group called Querdenken. “Free Speech Lover RFK Jr. Loses Bid to Punish Online Critic,” Daily Beast,...