The Angry Bear

Prof. Joel Eissenberg, Upfront Blog For Christmas 2021, Linda gave me a copy of “The St. Louis Commune of 1877: Communism in the Heartland” by Mark Kruger. The title certainly grabbed my attention. Having read it, there’s somewhat less than meets the eye here. The reason I never heard of this before is that the “commune” was very brief and poorly organized, and the history has been mostly ignored, since the historical impact on St. Louis...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for December 27 – 31 at Seeking Alpha The last edition of Weekly Indicators for 2021 is up at Seeking Alpha. I have been watching restaurant reservations for the first signs of the economic impact of Omicron. Well . . . . Additionally, interest rates are hitting an important milestone this week, that is changing some of their ratings, and with that the reading of the long leading forecast. As...

Georgia beat up Michigan Football and Coach Jim Harbaugh badly this last weekend. It was not even close. Michiganders take their football seriously, more seriously than contracting Covid. Hospitalization for Covid increased dramatically in Michigan. According to the CDC, it is the delta strain impacting the unvaccinated Michiganders. The Republican dominated Senate and House shut down the Governor and Michigan Health Director’s ability to restrict...

Agricultural Economist and Farmer Michael Smith Sherman Act v. Modern Conglomerate Agriculture Multiple times the Biden Administration, along with Secretary Vilsack, and other administrations have made multiple public comments and now threats of investigation of beef producers and their horizontal and vertical integration over the past few decades. The targeting of the beef industry is one of the loudest and most recent, but we fail to realize...

Mr. Etcetera The subtitle of T. R. Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population advertised its inclusion of “remarks on the speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other writers.” In volume I of Capital, Marx did not mention William Godwin’s name.  One might say, rather, that Marx studiously avoided mentioning Godwin. He did, however, engage in a sustained disparagement of Malthus — particularly his essay on population. This alone would...

Alan Collinge’s Student Loan Justice Facebook page. I keep talking about how the consolidation fees, late fees, forbearance interest, etc. and the interest on the previous adds up over time. Pretty soon, it surpasses the original loan balance. There are probably worse examples of this occurring. As it is, the non-principal payments are more than twice the original principal. The original loan was $105,000. As you can see there is ~$81,000 in...

Dare I Disagree With David Ignatius?  In today’s Washington Post (Dec. 31 ), intel columnist David Ignatius had a ten question multiple choice quiz about what will happen in 2022. He provided his own answers at the end, effectively forecasting.  Many I agree with and some, speculative about tech developments and such like, I have no opinion on.  However, on two very important ones, I think I disagree with him, if not overwhelmingly so. One of...

Hopeful New Year, New Deal democrat In view of the continued conflagration of the COVID pandemic, I am eschewing the traditional “Happy New Year!” salutation as we end 2021 and begin 2022 in favor of the above “Hopeful New Year.” I always try to stick with the data – one of the favorite things anyone has ever said about my writing is that I appear to be “praeternaturally detached” – and that almost always staying away from the “We’re...

2022? Another year passed. Be safe, mask up, distance yourselves, get the shots, and just be safe.

RIP Betty White. One of her finest moments: [embedded content] Tags: 2021, celebrities, death