The Angry Bear

What Every Conservative Needs to Know about Student Loans, Alan Collinge, Medium. Conservatives have been tricked into defending the worst big-government loan scam in U.S. History; a slight majority of the borrowers identify as either republican, or independent. The 2020 election was a huge loss for the republicans. Even so, Conservatives buoyed by recent election wins, and the current unpopularity of the President. There is one issue that...

Just finished reading “Bloodlands,” a book by Yale historian Timothy Snyder. It was published in 2010, but now has a lengthy afterword that discusses the book’s reception and ties the theme to current events. I was inspired to read this book because of events in Ukraine and I believe that I have a much better understanding of the current conflict from having read it.The bloodlands refers to the territory lying between central Poland and, roughly, the...

Japan, The U.S., The Moon And More, Weldon Berger, Bad Crow Review Links are at the end, with the steam trains. The train station had a 7-11 outside the platforms. The station was near my hotel and I went there for evening snacks a few times—bentos and musubi and azuki bean pastries and the like. Good food, really, in context. I miss trains, as regular readers will know. Trains and crows, neither of which I got any good shots, the latter...

Infidel753: Cultural vandalism As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of ‘The Times’ had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead.  This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks,...

February jobs report: the decelerating trend resumes   – by New Deal democrat As I’ve written several times this week, my focus on this report was on whether manufacturing and residential construction jobs turned negative or not, whether temporary jobs continued on their downward trajectory, and whether the deceleration apparent in job growth would reappear after the blockbuster January report. Deceleration absolutely reasserted itself:...

This is Part One covering Medicare Advantage, Direct Contracting, and the MA Money Machine of which the Risk Scores drive the payout. If the Risk Scoring methodology was eliminated, ~$355 billion over the next eight years if just the risk-score related overpayments were eliminated. This is a pretty good read if you have the patience to cover all of it. I have added acronym and other definitions at the bottom. I have also added some additional...

Hey, if you have not noticed, I have been doing most of the posting at Angry Bear, for myself, others, and for NDd on Angry Bear on various topics. NDd’s commentary I consider to be important and timely reporting on housing, jobs, Covid, the economy, etc. He is on the money each time. It is amazing to me, how the FED keeps trying to blow the economy up and it keeps on ticking. There are a lot of reasons for such a great economy, none of which...

This NYT story just dredges up the stories we would read and hear in the fifties and sixties. Popular song when I was hanging around the coffee houses then. No Starbucks then or laptops. If the song was of your ilk. Arriving in record numbers, the children escaping other countries are ending up in jobs violating child labor laws. Their presence can be found in the factories making the products your own and safe children might be eating or wearing....

Parts of this Covid Vaccine Story came via the Daily Beast; Just hours after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) swore to question Moderna’s chief executive in a Senate hearing next month about plans to quadruple the price of its COVID-19 vaccine, the company abruptly reversed course, announcing in a statement that the vaccine would remain free to all consumers “regardless of their ability to pay.” The pharmaceutical giant was widely denounced last...

January JOLTS report consistent with a softening, but still very strong, labor market  – by New Deal democrat This morning’s JOLTS report for January, unlike the recent payrolls report, generally showed further softening in the labor market. While hires (red in the graph below, normed to a value of 100 as of February 2020) increased 121,000, quits (gold) declined 207,000, and openings (blue) declined 410,000: The downward trend in quits...