The Angry Bear

Angry Bear Michael Smith’s post The Future of Farming reminded me that food and water supply issues need regular updates and highlighting. This report caught my eye since we here in Boston are experiencing very dry conditions with hot day temps. The U.S. could see a new ‘extreme heat belt’ by 2053: The report, released Monday by the nonprofit research group First Street Foundation, found that within a column of America’s heartland stretching...

Reactors in France had to reduce power because of low flow in the rivers being used for cooling. The pictures show Lake Garda in Italy at record lows. The Rhine is becoming too low for barge traffic, for cruise ships. In Rome, the River Po is low. The Mediterranean is too warm. We hear a lot about mitigating the effects. OK, as long as it isn’t being used to enable; instead of addressing the causes. No doubt stop gaps are needed until we get...

The use of non-pharmaceutical interventions has been a source of persistent controversy during the COVID pandemic.  Opposition to NPIs was the motivating impulse behind The Great Barrington Declaration (GBD), which called for an immediate end all “lockdowns” and the use of “focused protection” to “protect the vulnerable”.  The GBD was trumpeted by the American Institute for Economic Research, a previously little-known organization that “educates...

In the second part of this “Letters from an American,” Prof. Heather talks about the violence being exhibited by trump-supporters. One man was killed after attacking the Cincinatti FBI office. That is a death wish in itself. Those people do not miss. As many conservatives speak out against the raid, not to mention past opponents such as Andrew Yang, the daughter of former VP Richard Cheney only dug her heels in deeper on her anti-Trump stance....

As you “should” know by now, Alan Collinge is an activist and has organized the Student Loan Justice Org a number of years ago. The Organization attempts to represent those student loan borrowers who have no recourse for forgiveness or bankruptcy as every other person in the nation has when taking out a loan? Alan and his thousands of followers having gathered well over 1 million signatures on a petition seeking relief from these loans. The...

Weekly Indicators for August 8 – 12 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Gas prices continue to be the dominant driver of changes in the current situation. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you fully up to date on the economic nowcast and forecast, and also reward me a little bit for my efforts. ...

A lot has been said about building semiconductor manufacturing plants in the US. One plant grows the silicon wafers and the other plant fabricates (fabs) the semiconductors. The manufacture of semiconductors is not labor intensive. Growing wafers is boring business as one engineer told me a decade back. The US did manufacture much of its need domestically at one time (see graph at the left). However, U.S. policymakers held tight to the belief...

One woman’s efforts which made a difference in bringing Social Security into a reality. This was up tonight at Prof. Heather’s “Letters from an American.” August 14th, then President Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law. “August 14, 2022 – Letters from an American,” Heather Cox Richardson (substack.com) Since it seems clear we will be deciding whether we want to preserve the Social Security Act by our choice of leaders in the next...

Russian Central Bank Head May Be Out  This is the first English language report of this, as near as I can tell after some serious googling, but it is all over a lot of pretty serious Russian sources. Reportedly, Elvira Naibiullina, Head of the Russian Central Bank, left her position this past Tuesday or thereabouts.  It is unclear if she resigned or was fired, although the hints seem to be the latter. The buzz is that she is going to be made a...