Tag Archives: politics

Commenter and Blogger RJS, MarketWatch 666, Personal Income Rose 0.5% in October, Personal Spending Rose 1.3%, PCE Price Index Rose 0.6%, Savings Rate Lowest Since December 2019 The October report on Personal Income and Outlays from the Bureau of Economic Analysis includes the month’s data for our personal consumption expenditures (PCE), which accounts for more than 70% of the month’s GDP, and with it the PCE price index, the inflation gauge the...

As always, I am bloviating on a matter where I am not expert. I do sometimes wonder what the hell we should do with the strange human invention called intellectual property. It can be argued that it was a brilliant invention. For example the US Constitutional Convention wrote “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;”...

And now what Sandwichman calls a frivilous post. The right-wing War on Wokeness has won over Seattle progressive Democrats . . . “because we can’t afford to give the GOP any ammunition for the 2022 election.” Democrats, who are famous for “keeping our powder dry,” are now concerned that their opponents may use the specter of wokeness against them unless they get out in front with hardy denunciations of wokeness. In other news, Susan Sarandon...

Blogger and Commenter RJS, 3rd Quarter GDP Grew at a 2.1% Rate, Revised from 2.0%; All on Inventories, No Real Final Sales The Second Estimate of our 3rd Quarter GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis indicated that our real output of goods and services grew at a 2.1% annual rate over the quarter, revised from the 2.0% growth rate reported in the advance estimate a month ago, as personal consumption expenditures grew more than was previously...

An Intro and some history: Alan Collinge at Student Loan Justice Organization. Alan has collected 1,065,931 signatures on his petition asking President Joe Biden to cancel student loan debt. His new goal is to reach 1.5 million signatures. If you believe in the cause you should sign his petition. Petition · President Biden: Cancel Federal Student Loans, and Return Bankruptcy Rights to the Rest. · Change.org Just a signature is all Alan is...

Commenter and Blogger RJS at Focus on Fracking and MarketWatch 666 brought up the past history of US SPR oil releases and the impact on oil prices in the Comments section. Since 1990, each time releases (SPR) have been made, there has been a countering reduction of oil by OPEC which could include Russia this time. Taken from Tyler Durbin’s Zero Hedge post entitled “Saudis, Russians Consider Pausing Oil Production Increases In Retaliation To...

EconoSpeak: Playing With The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Barkley Rosser Over the last month crude oil prices have noticeably declined from in the neighborhood of $85-86 per barrel to $78-80 per barrel. But there has been only a very small decline in retail gasoline prices, and the headlines even as of yesterday was all about “sharply rising gas prices.”  So, Pres. Biden has moved to release a record amount of oil from the Strategic Petroleum...

Former Washington Monthly writer Nancy Le Tourneau had this post up on her own site Horizons. The topic? Biden signing proclamations restoring the original boundaries of Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante and Northeast Canyons, and Seamounts National Monuments. “A President for ALL Americans,” Horizons, Nancy LeTourneau’s big picture look at politics and life Nancy: I didn’t recognize the picture on the left. It was apparently taken...

Some, if not all, of the original thirteen may have had some claim to state’s rights in that as individual and separate colonies they had known some autonomy. None of the states admitted later, with the possible exception of Texas, had claim to such rights. Any legitimate claim by Texas, or any of the thirteen original, was abrogated with their secession from the Union during the Civil War. So many of our current ills are attributable to this...

Classical liberalism has an uneasy relationship with democracy.  Friedrich Hayek, for example, argued in The Constitution of Liberty and in Law, Legislation, and Liberty that democracy might need to be suspended to preserve liberal economic institutions.  And he meant it, as his support for Pinochet in Chile made clear.  Democracy in America is now under serious threat due to the increased radicalization of the Republican party.  Donald Trump...