On 1 July, I retired from my 37-year faculty gig. Among other things, this meant shifting from private insurance to Medicare. I haven’t yet used my Medicare coverage, but my wife, who retired two years ago as a faculty at a different university, has had no difficulties with her transition to Medicare. So far.The Medicare Conversion Factor (the multiplier used to calculate payment rates for each service or procedure) for 2025 will be the lowest since...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]RADHIKA DESAI: Hello and welcome to the 31st Geopolitical Economy Hour, the show that examines the fast-changing political and geopolitical economy of our time. I’m Radhika Desai. MICHAEL HUDSON: And I’m Michael Hudson. RADHIKA DESAI: And working behind the scenes to bring you our show every fortnight are our host, Ben Norton, our videographer, Paul Continue Reading The post Quality of Debt Counts first appeared on Michael Hudson.

A counter argument by Robert Reich about Pres. Joe Bidens 2021 CHIPS Act. Why Did the US give away $52bn to corporations like Intel? by Robert Reich The Guardian Congress will soon put final touches on the Chips Act, which will provide more than $52bn to companies that design and make semiconductor chips. The subsidy is demanded by the biggest chipmakers as a condition for making more chips in America. It’s pure extortion. The...

More on Pharmacy Benefit Managers and their influence on costs In case you forgot who the PBMs are? The FTC said in its interim report, the “increasing vertical integration and concentration enables the six largest PBMs to manage nearly 95 percent of all prescriptions filled in the United States.” Those six are Caremark Rx, LLC; Express Scripts, Inc.; OptumRx, Inc.; Humana Pharmacy Solutions, Inc.; Prime Therapeutics LLC; and MedImpact...

Not sure if he started to cry while the trump supporters were taking him to task. Must be the heat was to great and he was not armed. “Kyle Rittenhouse” reverses course on not endorsing Trump after online pile-on The Guardian Man who killed activists in 2020 questioned Trump’s gun rights bona fides before backing down in face of hate tweets. Acquitted killer Kyle Rittenhouse announced he would not be supporting Donald Trump’s attempt to...

by Dean Baker Center for Economic and Policy Research I’m really wondering after the network ran the second piece in three days blaming a weak economy for the fact that restaurants can’t sustain their inflated pandemic profit margins. The basic story here is that many restaurant chains took advantage of the supply chain crisis to increase their profit margins. To be clear, this means that they raised their prices by more than their costs....

Debt Forgiveness: The Only Solution?

By Sergio CesarattoA debate has developed in Europe (on Vox.eu and elsewhere) on the fiscal costs related to the interest payments that central banks in the eurozone are bestowing on commercial banks, a result of the way monetary policy is currently conducted. The implementation of monetary policy currently revolves around the ECB’s direct control of the interest rate paid on an abundant excess of bank reserves (relative to mandatory reserve requirements) (see Cesaratto 2020, chapter 7)....

This piece is a review on what is happening in increasing manufacturing capacity for computer, electronic, and electrical manufacturing. Where I am, there is increasing builds of facilities for each of those products. That being around the Phoenix area. One facility they have been working on for two years now and it appears to be near the end. Much of this is automated and probably much Labor. Semiconductor is basically growing wafer, populated the...

If he can get back in, would be substantial fiscal stimulus… Trump at least talking about economic proposals Dems just talking about all the transgender and climate nutter stuff while prices for real items remain elevated, unemployment rate keeps rising and rate of job creation keeps falling…[embedded content]Trump telling Powell at the Fed not to modify the policy rate before the election if he wants to finish his term if Trump gets back in…. Prediction markets now 100% probability of a cut...