Closely Watched Atlanta Fed Model Predicts Negative U.S. Growth in First Quarter

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 4, 2025 ~ On the very day that Donald Trump is set to deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, with a disapproval rating of 52 percent according to a CNN poll out on Sunday, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s model for predicting U.S. economic growth is flashing red. The model is known as GDPNow and is highly respected for its accuracy. After an update yesterday based on new, incoming economic data, GDP for the first quarter is predicted to be -2.8 percent. The GDPNow staffers wrote this yesterday: “The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2025 is -2.8 percent on March 3, down from -1.5 percent on February 28. After this morning’s releases from the US Census Bureau and the Institute for Supply Management, the nowcast of first-quarter real … Continue reading →

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Trump’s Gangster Diplomacy Makes Front Page Headlines Around the Globe

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 3, 2025 ~ Donald Trump’s gangster diplomacy and anger management issues went viral on the front page of newspapers around the globe on Saturday, following his verbal assault on Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, in the Oval Office on Friday. Those headlines were then parsed and debated on Sunday’s TV news programs here in the U.S. and by U.S. based newspaper columnists. Margaret Brennan of the CBS News program, Face the Nation, reported on her program on Sunday morning that “Our social media producers tell us that, as of this morning, we have had more than 100 million views on posts related to the meeting across our CBS News social media platforms.” The reason for the unprecedented interest is because no other U.S. President in history has conducted such thug “diplomacy” with a foreign ally by screaming at him in the Oval Office in … Continue reading →

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Charles Gaba at ACA Signups commenting on Trump and Vance selling out Ukraine. Today if you missed it, you can see our best of the best negotiators bullying Zelinsky as they attempt to sell out Ukraine to Russia. And still Trump wants to have access to Ukraine’s minerals. What jackasses we have for leadership. If […]

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Citigroup credited a client’s account with $81tn when it meant to send only $280, an error that could hinder the bank’s attempt to persuade regulators that it has fixed long-standing operational issues. Yes, that is 81 trillion U.S. Dollars, which about says it all. The good news for Citi is that–this time–they managed to get […]

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America has set its life upon a cast and will now stand the hazard of the die.  As of today, most likely, Trump’s legacy will be that he sold out the United States of America, Ukraine, Europe, and Taiwan for his own personal benefit, and perhaps a nineteenth-century fantasy.  That his threats to annex Panama […]

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Each week, R.J. sends me briefings on various topics (covid, etc.) impacting the nation. This particular report caught my eye. If you have worked in the food industry, you would know an outbreak of listeria is serious. Such an outbreak leads to a shutdown of a facility for a long period of time. The FDA […]

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 – by New Deal democrat There were two important points in this morning’s personal income and spending report for January. The first is that there appears to be some unresolved seasonality at work. The second is that nevertheless both were weaker than one year ago. Nominally personal income rose 0.9%, while spending declined -0.2%. Since […]

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Back in the early 80s, Marshall and Warren made the link between gastric ulcers and Helicobacter pylori infections. Suddenly, a painful chronic condition that increased the risk of stomach cancer was curable with antibiotics. A major public health scourge today in America is dementia, particularly Alzheimer’s disease. There’s growing evidence that periodontitis is linked to […]

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With all the focus on Medicaid, I have been wondering; why haven’t we heard from the long-term care industry? Surely they must be hearing about the potential cut of $880 billion within the Medicaid budget. Oh, and this is a minimum directive given to the committees of jurisdiction as noted in their 58 page budget […]

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More political coverage this morning. If one can call it such. Trump lying about Medicaid and Musk doing the same about his cost cutting activities which is causing injury to millions of people. ~~~~~~~ He’s lying about what we did in the Clinton administration, lying when he says public servants are our enemies, and lying […]

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At the most. The GOP leadership keeps trumpeting work requirements and fraud when asked where they’ll find $880 billion in cuts to health care programs. That’s nonsense according to Merrill Goozner. The fraudulent work requirement meme, GoozNews I was glad to see fellow substacker Paul Krugman weigh in this morning on how the Republican Party is attacking […]

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Cruel and Usual: Republicans Prepare to Gut Medicaid – by Paul Krugman West Virginia is a very red state; Donald Trump received more than two thirds of its votes last year. It’s also a poor state, left behind by the 21st century economy. Because incomes are low, it pays very little in federal income taxes — less […]

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– by New Deal democrat This week’s report on initial jobless claims was of particular interest, because of the issue of whether Federal employees laid off by the new Administration would cause an increase. It appears they did. Initial jobless claims rose 22,000 for the week to 242,000, and the four week moving average rose 8,500 […]

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As the American population ages, the burden of dementia care is increasing. While the GOP congress hopes to ease that burden by cutting Medicaid funding and letting those folks die*, RFK Jr is tackling the prevention side to make sure more Americans and their loved ones suffer from this awful condition: “Robert F. Kennedy Jr., […]

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When They Come for the Judges, Civil Discourse Utah Senator Mike Lee knows better than this, which means that it’s about politics and not about the law. Specifically, it’s about letting politics trump the rule of law, the principle that there are laws that everyone, including the government, must follow. Apparently, the senator is no […]

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AB: Uppity Democrat and Congressional Person Maxwell Frost is in a battle with Florida GOP Chair Evan Power in the aftermath of a rancorous congressional session. “Florida GOP Chair Slams U.S. Congressman Protecting Medicaid, “We Are Laughing at You,” 2Paragraphs Headlines were made when Frost tried to counter a MAGA legislative majority determined to push President Donald Trump‘s […]

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• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has paused a multimillion-dollar contract from the Biden administration to create a new COVID-19 vaccine; • US health officials are reevaluating a $590 million contract for bird flu shots that the Biden administration awarded to Moderna; • A meeting of a committee that advises the FDA on vaccine policy has […]

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“As the measles outbreak in Texas keeps spreading, parents who previously chose not to vaccinate their children are now lining up to get their kids the shots needed to protect them from the serious illness. “People are more and more nervous” as they watch the highly contagious virus spread in their communities, mostly among children, […]

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As the EPI article says decades of federal policy and court decisions have placed limit on Labor’s to strike as allowed under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Evolving over the years, millions of workers have been excluded from the NLRA right to strike. As you can see on the graph below the numbers of […]

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More unwelcome news in (new) house prices, while sales continue sideways trend  – by New Deal democrat I almost always start out my post on new home sales by indicating that, while they are the most leading of all housing metrics, they are very noisy and heavily revised. That was true in spades for this […]

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