Stock market and consumer sentiment diverge more than ever

Well, since consumer sentiment has been measured, anyway. This is not at all surprising.

Multiple polls and surveys released in recent days have shown US consumer sentiment cratering—and all the while, the US stock market keeps hitting record highs.

…up until around 2020, consumer sentiment matched stock market performance closely, although there was a large divergence between the two leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, where stocks briefly outperformed consumer sentiment before crashing downward as the housing bubble burst.

But throughout the last six years, the graphic shows, the S&P 500 has produced an almost continuous upward surge even as consumer sentiment spirals downward.

“Absolutely incredible,” commented Kobeissi Letter. “Over the last six years, the S&P 500 has risen +130% while US Consumer Sentiment has collapsed by -55%, to its lowest since data began in 1952. We are witnessing the formation of the biggest wealth divide in modern history.” - Common Dreams

Little has changed in Gaza

US "mainstream" media is happily using Iran in order to avoid giving Israel's continuing behavior much coverage.

The raft of condemnations by Western governments of Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir’s taunts of flotilla volunteers whom the Israeli military illegally kidnapped from international waters was attended by a good deal of hypocrisy, since the US government despises them as well, and few European governments support them.

What much of the reporting ignores, however, is how necessary the aid flotilla still is, since the Israelis have gone back to blockading key foodstuffs, medicine and fuel, and continue to shell and bomb people in Gaza. In other words, the genocide continues under the cover of the Hormuz crisis. - Informed Comment

“Corporate Social Responsibility” is pretty much dead

Not that it ever showed much life. In any case it will only be resurrected if it’s forced on them. I don’t doubt that plenty of business school grads start with some measure of idealism. But current corporate culture gets them ditching that in a hurry.

It’s 15 years since Michael Porter and Mark Kramer galvanised the stodgy world of Corporate Social Responsibility with their report in the Harvard Business Review, ‘Creating Shared Value’, with the not unambitious sub-title of: ‘How to Reinvent Capitalism and Unleash a Wave of Innovation and Growth’...

Nobody talks about Shared Value these days. Back then, the idea that the surplus value created by companies could be shared more equitably between shareholders, employees, suppliers, communities and other stakeholders did indeed present itself as an imaginative way of rescuing capitalism from its own worst tendencies, moving beyond ‘self-defeating trade-offs between business and society’.

Well, yes – depending on how much faith you have in the idea of companies acting voluntarily for the ‘common good’– in the absence of legislation. In retrospect, Porter and Kramer were staggeringly naive in their expectations of the so-called ‘voluntary principle’. - Beyond Nuclear

Corporate health care gouging is worse than ever

An excellent presentation of what’s been going on for a while.

The largest corporate health care hospitals in the country are consolidating their power and using it to rip off patients, a new study from Families USA shows. Released amid the GOP’s manufactured affordability crisis, the study shows that health care executives at a handful of corporations are setting “high and irrational prices” in every state and charging patients almost three times what Medicare pays for the exact same service.

The 15 largest systems charged an average of 282 percent more than the Medicare rate, the study found, resulting in $22 million in profit per hospital per year…

The reason hospital executives can do this is because they are consolidating at a rapid clip, buying up independent providers, and jacking up prices at will. Five or fewer corporations in 42 states and the District of Columbia “controlled at least half of all hospital care in 2023,” researchers found. In almost half of all states, just three corporations controlled the majority of hospital care. Hospital executives have no competition or regulations to discipline their price-gouging, so they “can charge basically whatever they want, because they can,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA. - Tha American Prospect

More ICE cruelty to detainees

Conditions in facilities are no secret. And there’s this:

On October 3, 2025, the Trump administration abruptly stopped paying third-parties for medical care provided to detainees in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Third-party providers are used to provide “medically necessary” care including “dialysis, prenatal care, oncology, [and] chemotherapy,” according to ICE…

The decision to stop reimbursing third parties for the medical care of ICE detainees has coincided with a significant spike in deaths, according to data released by the agency.

From 2018 to 2024, the average number of people who died in ICE custody annually was 8.9. That includes a spike in 2020 related to the onset of the COVID pandemic. In 2025, 33 people died in ICE custody, including 12 after the medical reimbursements stopped.

The trend is accelerating. In the first four months of 2026, 18 people have died in ICE custody. Since ICE stopped medical reimbursements on October 3, 2025, people have been dying in ICE custody at a rate of 51.7 people annually. This is more than five times the death rate before the policy was implemented. - Popular Information

Energy-efficiency programs are absolutely not the problem

This is foolish, ridiculous, and politically playing into the Trumpers’ hands.

A handful of Democratic-led states are targeting energy-efficiency programs in an attempt to provide relief on soaring utility bills.

It’s surprising, given the broad support energy-efficiency programs have among Democrats — and the fact that these incentives produce energy savings that benefit both the climate and all consumers. The short-term savings may be tempting, advocates say, but chasing them is misguided.

“The subject of affordability is a serious one across many states across the country. People are hurting, and energy costs are too high,” said Forest Bradley-Wright, state and utility director for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. ​“Energy efficiency did not cause the energy affordability crisis, and the problem can’t be solved by cutting energy efficiency.” - Canary Media

The Trump administration is set to royally mess up fighting wildfires

Ignoring science, again. That is, people with egos easily ten times the size of their intellects rejecting what they don’t understand and therefore fear.

As the U.S. wildfire season approaches, experts warn it could be one of the worst in recent memory. This will also be the first season managed by the Trump administration’s U.S. Wildland Fire Service, and the agency is pursuing a risky fire management strategy…

“We will enter this season with the presumption of a full suppression strategy applied to every wildfire under DOI management,” (Interior Secretary Doug) Burgum reportedly wrote in the April 8 memorandum, emphasizing a responsibility to protect communities, landscapes, habitat, and critical infrastructure…

The scientific consensus on full suppression fire management is that it is unsustainable and counterproductive in fire-adapted regions like the American West, the Great Plains, and the Southeast. Research has shown that immediately extinguishing smaller fires that don’t threaten life or property—rather than letting them burn under careful management—sets the stage for more severe, hazardous fires to ignite in that area. - Gizmodo