Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

Labor as a Common Pool Resource The everyday experience of working people, economic policies of governments, bargaining priorities of trade unions, and theoretical models of economists refute the idealistic maxim that labor is not a commodity. An early rationale for the proposition was given in 1834 by William Longson of Stockport in his evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Hand-Loom Weavers: – …every other commodity when...

UNITED WE SPEND For 20 Top-Selling Drugs Worldwide, Big Pharma Revenue from U.S. Sales Combined Exceeded Revenue from the Rest of the World, Public Citizen, Rick Claypool and Zain Rizvi, I have written on the high prices of pharmaceuticals in the past on Angry Bear, pointing to a WHO report which showed the costs laid out to bring the drugs to market had been recovered, and hinting on a new approach to increasing profitability by claiming...

US natural gas hits highest price since 2008, closes at 7 1/2 year weekly high; European and Asian prices 5 times higher, Commenter RJS, Focus on Fracking Oil prices rose for a sixth consecutive week as rising global demand amid tight supplies more than offset higher US inventories . . . after rising 3.0% to $73.98 a barrel last week as U.S. crude inventories fell to a 35month low and as global oil supplies tightened, the contract price for US...

August Personal Income up 0.2%; 2 Months PCE Would Subtract 0.07 Percentage Points from Q3 GDP, Blogger and Commenter RJS reports at MarketWatch 666 The August report Personal Income and Outlays from the Bureau of Economic Analysis gives us nearly half the data that will go into 3rd quarter GDP, since it gives us 2 months of data on our personal consumption expenditures (PCE), which accounts for nearly 70% of GDP, and the PCE price index, the...

Blogger RJS,@ Market Watch 666, “August Durable Goods: New Orders Up 1.8%, Shipments Down 0.5%, Inventories Up 0.8%“ The Advance Report on Durable Goods Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders for August (pdf) from the Census Bureau reported that the value of the widely watched new orders for manufactured durable goods increased by $4.6 billion or 1.8 percent to $263.5 billion in August, after rising by a revised 0.5% in July….July’s...

Addendum to US crude supplies at 35 month low; Total oil and product supplies at 6 1/2 year low – Angry Bear (angrybearblog.com) by RJS Authors of Angry Bear Posts and I converse from time to time. We talk about what they write, what its content implies, and what they are thinking. This note came from RJS at Marketwatch 666, etc. Keep it mind as oil production has not returned to prior levels as of yet. The US has been drawing down its underground...

Commenter and Blogger RJS adds more detail to what I would suggest is a coming shortage of oil and oil products. Focus on Fracking US crude supplies at a 35 month low; total supplies of oil and all products made from it at a 6 1/2 year low… US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending September 17th indicated that despite sizeable increases in our oilfield production and our oil imports, we still needed to...

Diane Lim writes an analysis of the economic theory of the marginal incentives people have to go back to work at her blog EconomistMom. Worth a visit: Quote: “Get ready to see lots of press on the ending of pandemic unemployment benefits in some parts of the country and what it shows about how much those benefits are to blame for keeping people from getting back to work. See, for example, this Wall Street Journal story which offers this...

President Biden’s temporary ARPA Improves ACA Subsidies through 2022. xpostfactoid: Will 60-64 year-olds have a choice between Medicare and Obamacare? What will that look like?, ARP puts more ‘affordable’ in the Affordable Care Act | healthinsurance.org and How the American Rescue Plan Act will boost marketplace premium subsidies | healthinsurance.org If you have not been reading any of what is going on with the ACA and Medicare; it is time...

“Bungling The Debt Ceiling,” EconoSpeak, Barkley Rosser It looks like Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is bungling the matter of raising (or suspending) the debt ceiling, coming due in mid-October supposedly. He could have tied it to reconciliation in August, but decided not to, intent on getting GOPster on board with participating in doing it. But Sen. McConnell (R-KY) is having none of it, and even though Schumer thought he had them by tying it to a...