Archive for December 2021

The Friday File: At present there are five Covid-19 variants of concern: alpha, beta, gamma, delta and omicron. There are two variants of interest: lambda and mu, and three former variants of interest now classified as variants under monitoring: kappa, iota, and eta. There are also three former variants: epsilon, theta, and zeta. Importantly, nu…

In September, the latest month for which data exists, a staggering 3% or 4.4 million US employees quit their jobs. At the bottom of the wage-scale it’s due to a desire to avoid face-to-face contact. That should dissipate as jobs are reengineered and Covid hopefully fades. At the top end, telecommuting has permanently increased the…

With the arrival of the Omicron variant, Fed fear of inflation has unseated unemployment as problem #1. Just as the Delta variant weakened GDP growth and worsened supply-chain problems, the fear is that a replay is in the offing with Omicron. Thus, the Fed is now likely to finish tapering by late March rather than…