The Angry Bear

In this post, I criticize current US weapons policy. I have been doing this for over 40 years. I have been saying the same things for those 40 years. This means I can check on the hostages I have given to fortune and mark my beliefs to market. My thoughts again 1) I think that the US should buy smart munitions to be fired from many cheap platforms (that is I take one side in a decades long debate). 2) I think there has been a pattern of...

I plan to write a series of posts on which and how many weapons the US should buy. I start with two important disclaimers. First, obviously, I have no expertise and probably don’t know what I am talking about. Second, I firmly believe that the US Federal Government intertemporal budget constraint is currently satisfied with slack, so spending can be increased without ever increasing taxes or cutting otehr spending. To argue that wasteful spending...

The Most Evil Rant in Aynkind’s History n previous posts, I discussed the Senate confirmation hearings plagiarism by Keisha Russell of a Washington Post column by Marc Thiessen and the shoddy scholarship of the former history professor, Allen C. Guelzo that underwrote the bizarre claim that “critical race theory is a subset of critical theory that began with Immanuel Kant.”  In the latter post, I stuck to the source that Guelzo cited in his...

Conventional Macroeconomics Rears Its Head  It is always annoying to have to admit one has been wrong.  But I was among those who a year ago or so was going along with those who argued inflation was transitory and the rate would probably come down later in the year.  The annoying Larry Summers, along with the somewhat less annoying Olivier Blanchard, prominently argued the contrary, hauling out old-fashioned conventional macroeconomic arguments...

Maybe I am missing something along the way here. Or is there just so many times when you go and kick the football and Lucy or in this case Joe Manchin decides to move the football again. Joe Manchin ain’t no cartoon character and I am not Charlie Brown. Somebody has to be getting a bit angry by now. We are trying to appease a chameleon, a child, or just a plain liar. Manchin; “I’ve heard people say that before the July 4 break, you should have...

Or was it? How many philosophical ‘baby Hitlers’ does it take? That’s a tough one, because how could you know? By 1937, it was a no brainer. By 2002, it was a no brainer. By 2008, less than zero. Now, there is no doubt it has been discussed at the highest levels, here, in Europe, and between. Especially since February this year. Is war a sport with rules as to what is fair and what is not? Then, one man caused the deaths of 75-80 million human...

Or was it? How many philosophical ‘baby Hitlers’ does it take? That’s a tough one, because how could you know? By 1937, it was a no brainer. By 2002, it was a no brainer. By 2008, less than zero. Now, there is no doubt it has been discussed at the highest levels, here, in Europe, and between. Especially since February this year. Is war a sport with rules as to what is fair and what is not? Then, one man caused the deaths of 75-80 million human...

RJS, MarketWatch 666 “February” Durable Goods: New Orders Down 2.2%, Shipments Flat, Inventories Up 0.4% The “Advance Report on Durable Goods Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders for February” (pdf) from the Census Bureau reported that the value of the widely watched new orders for manufactured durable goods decreased by $6.0 billion or 2.2 percent to $271.5 billion in February, the first decrease in five months, after January’s...

As I noted previously, Congress has somehow failed to provide funding for COVID vaccines and treatments.  This is a major policy error, an error that could kill many tens of thousands of people if not corrected. You might think that spending on vaccines and treatments would be something we could all agree on, regardless of our other differences on COVID policy.  After all, even libertarians who oppose mask and vaccine mandates and social...