– by New Deal democrat I’ve written repeatedly in the past few months that I am paying especial attention to the manufacturing and construction sectors for signs of weakness now that the supply chain tailwind for the economy has ended. At the beginning of this month, one show appeared to have dropped, as the ISM report on manufacturing showed contraction for the second month in a row, declining slightly to 48.7, with the more leading new orders...

Less than a week away and the debate between Biden and Trump will occur. Given Biden’s State of the Union Address, I do not envision he will be giving much room to trump. I do believe trump’s main weaponry will be interrupting Biden’s speech so as to confuse the issues amongst people. There is no real way to control trump so as to conduct a civil exchange. Economist Robert Reich has a pretty good idea of what to do. I hope Biden’s speechwriters...

Finally, someone of stature is taking a look at private equity acquiring hospital chains, milking their funds, and leaving a shell of what the original hospital was earlier. I am hoping Elizabeth Warren can force the issues with these take overs private equity takeovers. In the end, many communities depending on these hospitals are left without adequate healthcare services. Thy are forced to travel miles to get emergency and other care. I added 4 to...

 – by New Deal democrat This morning’s jobless claims report continued the uptrend we’ve seen for the past month. But it still looks more likely than not that it is mainly unresolved post-pandemic seasonality. We’ll probably get a more definitive answer to that issue in th next several weeks. Initial Jobless claims declined 5,000 for the week to 238,000. The 4 week moving average rose 5,500 to a new 9 month high of 232,750. With the typical one...

The Daily Kos is influential "on the left." This is good review of "Finding the Money" and hopefully it will wake more folks up to the fact that affordability is not the issue but rather the availability of real resources.Daily KosWatch this MovieBethesda 1971

Nvidia aside, fiscal flows will remain strong through the end of the year. 

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Pandemics are bad for economies. Vaccinations are an important bulwark against pandemics. But all viruses and all vaccines are not alike.In the case of the annual flu vaccine, annual vaccination against flu variants can be a problem: antibody-producing memory cells crowd out new antibody-producing cells, and people develop relatively few neutralizing antibodies against the strains in the newer vaccine. Does getting updated COVID boosters interfere...

Is ethnic segregation positive? In many European countries over the past decades, there has been increasing frustration over what is perceived as a lack of social integration of immigrants and children of foreign-born parents. One factor that researchers and politicians have highlighted as a possible explanation is what is called ‘neighbourhood effects,’ which, simply put, refers to how the area where one grows up and/or lives affects one’s life. There has...