The Angry Bear

Donald Trump and JD Vance are campaigning on xenophobia. There’s no evidence that immigrants are any sort of threat to America, and the data show that immigrants commit crimes at *lower* rates than American citizens. Sadly, though, fear of the other seems to work in America:“Jeffrey Balogh, a resident of Erie, said at that event that he feels strongly about Trump’s proposals on immigration. He shared that he felt uncomfortable recently when he went to...

by Lloyd Alter Carbon Upfront There is a sense of humor here being shown by Lloyd. He is asking Elon Musk to build differently than what he would do if planned by the market. Granted electric vehicles have been a part of what Tesla offers. Lloyd is asking Elon to go a step farther and build something smaller that the US car manufacturer behemoths have been building. Lloyd wants it even smaller and on a car suspension rack. It makes sense for...

– Nadia Evangelou National Association of Realtors A good read explaining why things slowed down. Good introduction of why housing market fell apart since 2020. Much was due to the Fed Rate which was significantly higher than it normally was. People did not have the income to support a higher payment caused by a higher Mortgage Rate. Some excellent charting by NAR Calculations. Housing affordability has been a critical issue in the housing...

– by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha.  The long end of the yield curve has steepened, and that means longer term interest rates are higher. Meanwhile the Hurricanes have played havoc with some of the high frequency data. As usual, clicking over and reading will help sort through the noise, and reward me a little bit for organizing and categorizing it for you. The Bonddad Blog New Deal democrats...

I had an email exchange a couple days ago with Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo about polls (which he’s written a lot about recently) and the election betting market (which he had never mentioned). Yesterday, he used our exchange as a jumping off point to explain why he doesn’t believe the betting market is reliable and certainly no improvement over polling. The money grafs:“First of all, as I said, bets are largely made on the basis of...

The issue of the Tax Cuts expiring will be arriving at everyone’s doorstep come the end of 2025. They do not give an exact date so i will go with EOM December 2025. Does someone making close to or more than $400,000 annually deserve a continuation into 2026 and beyond? Not sure. I think the 1 percenter should be paying more tax. My wife and I paid some high taxes (what we would call high) when we were under $200,000 annually after deductions....

by Stephen Nuñez Roosevelt Institute Excellent piece by Stephen Nuñez on SSI and it not adjusting or growing with the changes in economic needs from 50 years ago. Indeed, for the few dollars given out, SSI appears to penalize people rather than assist them. It is ripe for a change to be more supportive of the millions of beneficiaries using it. This year marks the golden anniversary not just of Nixon’s resignation or the Happy Days premiere,...

– by New Deal democrat Sometimes producer prices lead consumer prices; sometimes they don’t – but in the sense that sometimes there is no lag at all before increases show up in consumer prices. In any event, overall the message from the producer price index this morning was benign, with very little pressure “in the pipeline” for consumer inflation.To begin with, raw commodity prices (red) declined -1.2% in September, continuing their 2+ year...

The old model of a single doc running a practice is disappearing in America. Between the overhead and the reduced compensation, this model of health care delivery looks increasingly anachronistic.When I started as an assistant professor at a medical school in 1987, there was a lot of money sloshing around. Patients and their insurance companies would pay a premium to be seen by docs in an academic health care practice. Managed care put an end to that,...

Catch some good articles in The Atlantic. Usually take this on a long flight to read. He is all set for Halloween. The Atlantic came out for Kamala Harris. Guess they do not think much of the orange one. Scare the kids on Halloween and keep the candy. This is just a partial. If you like it, I can post the rest. It is a good read. The Atlantic, for the fifth time in its 167-year history, is endorsing a candidate for president: Kamala Harris....