From 2011 to 2020, Intel blew $130 billion on stock buybacks ($81B) and dividends ($49B). Now they need taxpayers to give them billions? Imagine that the father in a family of four did this with all the money that the family had…. Imagine the husband in a family of four gave away all of his family’s money to some person he’d never met. That person indirectly told the husband…

There are hundreds of metrics we could use to gauge how well the U.S. healthcare system performs. Let’s focus today on two of the biggest-picture measuring sticks — life expectancy and total amount paid per person for healthcare. Individual hospitals, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies all have their own ways…

Recently one Medium subscriber said in an article reply that Democrat voters shouldn’t rock the boat or make real demands of Biden and Pelosi and Schumer because that won’t solve anything and could make things worse. You know, sometimes the reply to a Medium article is more important than the…

Two well-known facts about the US stock market: (1) The Top 10% owns 89% of all US stocks. (2) 58% of adult Americans own stock. But . . . These two well-known, often-quoted stats are both at least technically true. But whether technically true or not, they are each deeply…

In late 1983 and into 1984, times were amazing and the best they had ever been in the semiconductor industry. Until they weren’t. (Quick note: If you have not read “WTF! Our Taxpayer Money Will Pay for Intel’s $130 Billion in Stock Buybacks and Dividends?” I recommend this article also…

“Money for nothing and CHIPS for free” is not a thing. Is the CHIPS Act only a $300B bill designed to boost polls for Congress and Biden? Suddenly over the past week, the CHIPS Act has been back in the news. Is this good news, or is it the foreshadowing…

An introduction to Ai Ninomiya, a Japanese singer who performs live, unplugged cover versions of Japanese and english pop songs. It’s Friday afternoon and time for a fun, feel-good article! A Japanese friend from Kyoto introduced me to a singer a couple years ago named Ai Ninomiya . . …

Most of the stock market’s strong surge from 2020 to 2022 was not due to companies all of a sudden doubling their profit forecasts. Instead… The 120% rise in the S&P 500 over just 22 months was due to trillions and trillions of dollars of stimulus money being pumped: into…

What do Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden all have in common? They have all consistently misrepresented jobs numbers in the U.S. If you’ve ever seen a president pounding their chest when it comes to jobs numbers — and they all do it — it looks pretty much like this…