It may sound counterintuitive, but in reality, it is not. 

– by New Deal democrat The drought in new economic data continues through today. We’ll make up for it all at once tomorrow with jobless claims, retail sales, and industrial production. In the meantime, last week I noted that Hurricane Helene’s impact in Florida and North Carolina was a big part of the reason for the spike in initial claims. Let me follow that up further today. To begin with, State by State initial claims data is only available...

October 15, 2024 Letters from an American After Trump’s bizarre performance last night in Oaks, Pennsylvania, when he stopped taking questions and just swayed to his self-curated playlist for 39 minutes, his campaign this morning canceled a scheduled interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box, according to co-host of the show Joe Kernen. The campaign did not, though, cancel a scheduled live interview today with Bloomberg News and the Economic Club of...

This is a guest post by Charles Euchner, a political scientist and former special projects editor at New America. Euchner is the author of the forthcoming The Rules of Activism: Political and Social Movements and the Fight for Democracy (Polity Press, 2025). He can be reached at awriteratlarge.com. By Charles Euchner Why are we waiting? Three months have passed since the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. United States, which grants the...

Ett ljus i radiomörkret I dessa tider — när ljudrummet dränks i den kommersiella radions tyckmyckentrutade pubertalflams — har man nästan gett upp. Men det finns ljus i mörkret. I programmet Text och musik med Eric Schüldt — som sänds på söndagsförmiddagarna i P2 mellan klockan 11 och 12 — kan man lyssna på seriös musik och en programledare som verkligen har något att säga och inte bara låter foderluckan glappa. Att få höra någon med intelligens och känsla...

– By Jasmine Cui and Matthew Danbury NBC News Across the country, the prospect of home ownership is slipping out of reach for the ordinary buyer. The affordability gap — an estimate of the difference between an area’s median household income and how much income is necessary to afford payments on a median-priced home in that area — is near a 10-year high in the U.S., according to an NBC News analysis of housing data. The analysis and the...

– For some reason (we are trying to find out why) Word Press and Askimet is deciding some commenters are new and need to be approved again. Both Joel and I are aware of this and are working with another group to fix the issue. The system was changed by input from somewhere else (WP?) and not involving hackers. – We are also moving to a new server which is more in line with our needs. – Advertisements. We have advertising which pays for our...

They are all raising their bullish outlooks whereas my outlook is increasingly cautious. 

– by New Deal democrat  One of my fundamentals-based systems for monitoring the economy is to look at the health of household balance sheets. Most recessions happen when consumers are under stress. If real wages are growing, if assets that can be leveraged or cashed in (mortgage payments, home equity, stocks) are increasing in value, if monthly debt payments are not increasing, then there is no reason for consumers to pull back, and economic...

While this is called Medicare, it is Medicare which has been commercialized. Medicare pays additional fees subsidizing the insurance plan companies (United Healthcare, WellCare, Script, etc. offering Medicare Advantage plans Not only have healthcare plans are cutting services, healthcare systems are also pulling out of Medicare Advantage Plans. Both Joel and I discussed twenty-something different healthcare plans dropping Medicare Advance. 34...