Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please. I’m now using Substack as a blogging platform, and for my monthly email newsletter. For the moment, I’ll post both at this blog and on Substack. You can also follow me on Mastodon here. Share this:Like this:Like Loading...

Regn och höstrusk ute på ön idag. Men vad gör det — så länge man kan lyssna på programmet Text och musik med Eric Schüldt! Jag har i flera år nu lyssnat på Erics program varje söndag. En helg utan hans tänkvärda och ofta lite melankoliska funderingar och vemodiga musik har blivit otänkbart. Som så ofta de senaste åren är det den eminente Eric Schüldt som får mig att hitta nya ljudintryck. I en tid — många kallar den ‘modern’ — då alla förväntar sig omedelbar...

Prof. Heather giving a news report on the economy and what people are believing based on their politics. The economy has weathered a pandemic, inflation, supply chain events, a war in eastern Europe, dysfunctional Republicans, politics, trump, and it keeps on ticking. I expected more of a 2008 scenario with Congress and the Fed ravishing Labor as the troublemakers. October 27, 2023, Letters from an American, Prof. Heather Cox Richardson An...

Some BLS stats on High and Low Income consumers. The differences between the two, spending, what is bought, inflation, essentials, etc. Less is purchased and also more specific is bought by the lower end as compared to a variety of purchases at the upper end. Nice little and simple, readable report. Inflation Experiences for Lower and Higher Income Households, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov), Joshua Klick and Anya Stockburger...

From time to time I argue that the optimal strategy for Democrats is good old egalitarian populism: soak the rich and spread it out thin. I note the polls which have, for 3 decades now, shown that a majority of US adults think that upper income people and corporations pay less than their fair share in taxes and the fact that Bill Clinton, Obama, and Biden were elected promising to raise taxes on the rich and cut taxes on everyone else. I suppose...

I have been editing sections of my manuscript, and nothing out of that writing output is publishable here (since it is just a rehash of an earlier article). However, I am adding a new section on inflation theories that I will need to think about. This article summarises what I think I will cover.My manuscript is somewhat unusual in that I am mainly discussing the “known properties” of inflation, without offering a theory of inflation. The more usual situation is that people have extremely...

Weekly Indicators for October 23 – 27 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. With half of reports in, Q3 profits for corporations have made a new all-time high. Meanwhile the stock market has made repeated new 3 month lows. The former is a long leading indicator, the latter a short leading indicator, so we shall see which one proves more accurate. And in case you haven’t noticed at the...

Inflation Undermines Currency Value

Vaccination is one of the great triumphs of humanity over infectious disease. Smallpox was such a plague that George Washington mandated inoculation for all Continental soldiers in 1777. Prior to the polio vaccine, most Americans knew a friend or relative who contracted polio; today, it’s virtually unheard of, just like mumps and whooping cough. The COVID vaccines, particularly the mRNA vaccines of Moderna and Pfizer, are a triumph of genetic...

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