A Facebook friend just posted this: “So wildfires and the threat of wildfires is a part of our lives. Our homeowner’s insurance company, American National Property and Casualty (ANPAC) has notified us they are pulling out of New Mexico because their claims (especially fire claims) are higher than their reserves and they can’t cover the […]

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I think Joyce titled this properly . . . If you have not read the leadup to SCOTUS telling Trump no, they are not going to block the release, this may suffice. Attorney Joyce Vance does a good review of what took place to the final answer from SCOTUS. Towards the end you can read […]

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This report is pretty self-explanatory. I will say it anyway. The excess paid to MA plans over and above what is sent by Medicare is enough to wipe out Traditional Medicare Part B premiums. The sum of overpayment was anywhere from $88 billion to $140 billion as suggested on page 2 in the Introduction of […]

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Is Jay Bhattacharya a libertarian?  Does it matter? Jay Bhattacharya was an author of the Great Barrington Declaration, which argued that we should let covid spread freely among healthy people to reach herd immunity as quickly as possible.  The elderly and those whose health made them vulnerable to covid should be given “focused protection”.  Bhattacharya […]

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This is probably one of those boring commentaries which does not have many exciting issues which catch an Angry Bear reader’s eye. Yes and no to the premise. Just a question though: How is it, the richest nation in the world having one $300+ billionaire and many more billionaires also has so many homeless people […]

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Jobless claims still rocked by seasonality; native born unemployment rate of under 4% forecast  – by New Deal democrat Due to today’ official Day of Mourning for the late President Jimmy Carter, initial and continuing claims were released yesterday, but since I didn’t cover it then, let’s catch up now on the normal day. It […]

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This is a good take on the percentage of debt many homeowners are carrying as a percentage of GDP. I would think somewhere along the line, individual income plays a role in all of his. What Bill is telling us is the same hazards of lending are not as pronounced this time. Either banks, etc. […]

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Back in October, I posted that Elon Musk’s claim that he could cut $2 trillion from the federal budget showed he couldn’t do arithmetic. Evidently, Elon has finally acknowledged this, but he tries to make a virtue of necessity: “Elon Musk has walked back his previous claim that he could cut at least $2 trillion […]

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A plus now and a potential negative year end. January 8, 2025: ACA Open Enrollment is, was running over 16% ahead (I am sure it increased) of roughly the same point a year earlier in 2024, On January 8, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced “Nearly 24 Million Consumers Have Selected Affordable Health Coverage in […]

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In his year end report, Chief Justice Roberts called out “threats to defy lawfully entered judgments”. President Andrew Jackson reportedly said, in response to a Supreme Court ruling regarding the rights of the Cherokee Nation,  “The Chief Justice has made his ruling.  Now let him enforce it.” Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes asserted, the Constitution […]

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I grew up in the city of Chicago. Up until the time I left high school, I was not driving a car many places. I did not have a car until later and was stuck with my dad’s 64 Ford Fairlane Station wagon. It was huge and an unimpressive family car. I took the CTA […]

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The right-wing mantra is that private enterprise is always more efficient than government. As far as I can tell, private enterprise is more efficient at extracting dollars from citizens, yes. And banks have proven to be efficient at extracting bail-outs when their judgement leads to insolvency. Recently, the bankruptcy of for-profit Steward Health Care closed […]

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1st Look at Local Housing Markets in December – by Bill McBride Calculated Risk Newsletter NOTE: The tables for active listings, new listings and closed sales all include a comparison to December 2019 for each local market (some 2019 data is not available). This is the first look at several early reporting local markets in […]

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Truck sales sound a warning  – by New Deal democrat Twenty years ago Prof. Edward Leamer made a big splash with a speech to the Fed in which he proclaimed that “Housing IS the Business Cycle,” highlighting how downturns in the housing sector tended to lead recessions by an average of 7 quarters. For today’s […]

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Compare the above numeric in the title to the 96% of employees in the highest 10% of wage earners. having access to employer sponsored healthcare. In 2022, seventy percent of private sector workers had access to medical care benefits. Less than half of them obtained coverage that way (a take-up rate of just 66%). As […]

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Key findings about U.S. immigrants. Look at the first chart, you will see this is not the first time so many immigrants are arriving in the United States. What is occurring today is less than what occurred in 1890 (first paragraph) as a percentage of the present population. The United States has long had more […]

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Economically weighted ISM indexes for December forecast continued expansion  – by New Deal democrat We got two significant economic releases this morning. First, let’s take a look at the ISM services index. I’ll examine the November JOLTS report separately. Recall that services are about 75% of the economy. Thus, even if goods production is contracting, […]

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The upshot of a Republican led Congress threatening Medicaid kind of makes sense. They can’t threaten Musk, Zuckerman, or the other bunch of billionaires. They would pay for that occurrence. So, in order to look good they pick on those who have little political clout. They are not going to loudly mention how they cleaned […]

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I don’t listen to Spotify, but lots of my friends do. I had been spoiled for decades in St. Louis by the community radio station KDHX that broadcast lots of new music in many genres. But now that most of the KDHX DJs I listened to have quit or been fired as the management turned […]

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Last year genetically modified mosquitoes were released in Djibouti. The technology is new and the biology is interesting, but I am most interested in the politics. I am late to this story, since it was reported months ago. They released male Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes which bear a female lethal gene — they mated with females […]

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