The Angry Bear

Here is my inflation worry by New Deal democrat I want to follow up on a comment I made yesterday in connection with Wednesday’s consumer price report. It is certainly true that *inflation* is likely to be transitory. The 5.3% YoY inflation we’ve seen in June and July may certainly pass in the next few months and reduce to a more somnolent number under 3%. Hoorah! Inflation was transitory! But what if the price increases “stick?” In...

Over at NBER, Helliwell et al have a paper comparing the virus elimination strategy of China, Australia, New Zealand, etc., with the more common mitigation strategy followed by most countries (footnote omitted): Our analyses show that Eliminators experienced lower death rates from COVID-19. But to what extent were these reductions in COVID-19 deaths obtained at the expense of other aspects of economic and social life, and of the mental and...

Socially Ambivalent Labour Time X (part one): Chapters 15 and 25 Capital, volume one. I started this series with the intention of comparing Dilke’s “plain leveling principle” consumption-based conception of socially necessary labour time with Marx’s theory of value founded on a production-based concept of socially necessary labour time. Two episodes and a digression later, that original plan was upended by my encounter with the section in...

July consumer inflation: the spike subsides somewhat, but we are close to the limit of “transitory” For the last two months, my theme has been that if the spike in inflation only lasted two or three months, it was not a big deal, but if the trend were to continue longer, it would begin to impact consumer spending, and it will get the Fed’s attention. In that regard, the “good” news is that in July consumer inflation was “only” 0.5%. The bad...

Why the hell would I go back to 2019 and cite a Nancy Altman complaint about Trump’s Executive Order? Some Introduction There were already issues with Medicare Advantage in $billions of over charges as Ms. Altman cites in her commentary. Secondly, Medicare Advantage is not “single payer” like Medicare (even without creating hospital budgets, setting doctor fees, and controlling pharma) is. We should be looking at improving Medicare to true...

Coronavirus dashboard for August 11: evidence that the Delta wave may be peaking in the earliest hit States My framework of analyzing the economy via leading, coincident, and lagging indicators continues to come in handy at looking at the course of the pandemic. At the beginning of June, I flagged that the number of cases had stopped declining among 5 of the least vaccinated States. By the middle of June, I wrote that Delta was going to be...

by Joseph Joyce (Professor of Economics at Wellesley College, where he holds the M. Margaret Ball Chair of International Relations. He served as the first Faculty Director of the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs.) China’s Outward FDI Chinese firms that want to list their stock in U.S. equity markets face a series of hurdles. The Securities and Exchange Commission is implementing a new rule that requires the firms to...

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for August 9 – 13 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. For the first time, there are some significant if still minor impacts on the economy showing up due to the Delta wave. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the virtual moment as to the economy, and help me out a little bit with my lunch money. ...

I have no special insight on any foreign policy issue, but if you’re interested in a no-nonsense defense of Biden’s policy see this post by Scott Lemieux. His key points are (my interpretation/paraphrase): Long term low-engagement occupation was not a serious option, the only choices on the table were long term escalation or pulling out. (This is an important point to me. If low-engagement occupation could have worked long-term, that would...