The Angry Bear

Matteo Wong The Atlantic Abbreviated take at Angry Bear on what is happening at Tesla. Presently, the media has not been to kind to Tesla and its founder Elon Musk. The latest in The Atlantic gives a run down on the past and where Musk may take Tesla in the future. It sounds and looks better than what Tesla has been experiencing. Of late, Tesla’s cars have come to seem a bit hazardous. The self-driving features have been linked to...

SWI swissinfo.ch An interesting story coming out of Switzerland about Nestlé. In 2017 Nestlé adds sugar to baby food in low-income countries, report finds . . . made the following plan: Between 2017 and 2020 we want to reduce the added sugar in our products by a further 5%. In 2017 alone, Nestlé Switzerland withdrew 111 tonnes of sugar from its products, which is the equivalent of 22 million teaspoons or 444 million kcal. Much work had already...

At Thursday’s Supreme Court hearing on Trump’s immunity claim, Justice Alito worried that prosecuting former presidents would create an incentive for incumbent presidents to subvert democracy to remain in office and avoid prosecution (Transcript, p. 110-11): JUSTICE ALITO: All right.  Let me end –end with just a question about what is required for the functioning of a stable democratic society, which is something that we all want.  I’m sure you...

by Matthew Cunnigham – Cook The problems with Medicare Advantage is coding and pricing for care. And Fee for Service participants pay for the MA costs even though they do not use MA. “When accounting for favorable selection of enrollees in MA and higher MA coding intensity, we estimate Medicare spends approximately 22 percent more for MA enrollees. This spend is more than if those beneficiaries were a part of FFS Medicare. The difference...

by Lloyd Alter Carbon Upfront! The Toronto Star leads today with a story, “Ripe for a challenge,” in which climate change reporter Kate Allen describes attempts to grow strawberries indoors in Canada “as red-ripe and juicy as if they came out of a sunny field in July.” Canadians import C$6.2 billion more fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables than our food exports, “but a pandemic, wars, and the steadily thumping drumbeat of climate change have...

Oddly I am back here posting. Even more oddly I am posting on the topic I am paid to address. I start by noting two things. About one year ago, many macroeconomic forecasters predicted that a recession would have started by now in the USA. I forget who placed the probability at 100%. In spite of sltightly disappointing 0.4% (1.6% if annualized) real GDP growth in the first quarter of 2024, we are not in a recesion. What went right ? The...

Listening to the back and forth between the justices and Idaho’s Solicitor General, there is tension on display here. The Idaho Solicitor General appears to take the stance the abortion is available if necessary. The justices are questioning how such could be if doctors will not treat the women if abortion is needed. That being, doctors believe they blocked by Idaho’s abortion law. Alito takes the chicken or the egg approach with US Solicitor...

 – by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. Not much churn in the short leading or coincident timeframes this week. But one of the long leading indicators joined the “less bad” parade. This is what I would expect to see coming out of a recession, before growth in the shorter term improves. Just one week, but still . . . As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the virtual...

You gotta be old enough to remember what took place in the sixties and into the seventies with regard to protesting. In 1970 when I was bathing in and drinking the Camp Lejeune water, we were selected to be trained in riot control. JIC the protestors, the student protesters were a bit rambunctious in Washington D.C. All the better we were not called out. Still the same fears we are seeing today on college campuses. Similar right-wing dialogue by...

– by New Deal democrat The Bonddad Blog Personal income and spending has become one of the two most important monthly reports I follow. This is in large part because the big question this year is whether the contractionary effects of Fed tightening have just been delayed until this year, or whether the fact that there have been no rate hikes since last summer mean that the expansion will strengthen. Because real personal spending on services...