The Angry Bear

Coronavirus Dashboard for February 8: Omicron declines sharply; did Delta provide protection against the worst outcomes? As I mentioned yesterday, I haven’t posted a Coronavirus dashboard in awhile, and with Omicron in rapid retreat, it’s time for an update. To begin with, deaths are presently peaking at roughly 2450 a day, while nationwide cases are down almost 2/3’s: There are over a dozen States where numbers are now down close to, at, or...

Noah Smith (and many others) is irritated by a puff piece about Stephanie Kelton and modern monetery theory MMT by Jeanna Smialak in the New York Times. I am not interested in Smialak’s article. I think that Noah sums up his critique here very well “The article then demonstrates that it has little notion of what separates MMT from mainstream thinking: ‘M.M.T. theorists argue that society should feel capable of spending to achieve its goals to...

Student Loan Cancellation will not Benefit the Wealthy, Alan Collinge, Student Loan Justice Org. Alan Collinge History In 1972, allegations about students abusing bankruptcy3 courts were beginning to make headlines. Major newspapers were publishing anecdotes about students who took out large college loans. Supposedly then, young graduates or students quickly declared bankruptcy to avoid paying them off. The Congressional Commission on Bankruptcy...

Public opinion in many countries is shifting against COVID-19 precautions and restrictions – even against vaccine requirements.  This has some libertarians declaring victory.  Not only are they declaring victory, they are claiming that the rollback of restrictions shows that they were right all along, and that the restrictions were foisted on us by a corrupt government that should be stripped of its powers.  Some at least flirt with the idea of...

Can Ukraine Become A New Austria?  In this Sunday’s Washington Post, columnist David von Drehle suggests that a way out of the difficult Russia/Ukraine situation would be for Ukraine to become like what happened with Austria in 1955 and since; it formally became officially neutral, not joining either NATO or the Warsaw Pact, and has remained so since.   For Ukraine, this would in effect grant Putin his demand that Ukraine not join NATO, although...

Latest school book banning in certain areas of the country as presented by The Atlantic. Black Boy by Richard Wright, The Freedom Writers Diary by Erin Gruwell, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five as challenged by the Livingston (county. Michigan) Organization for Values in Education where I used to live. Catcher in The Rye did not make it on the banned list. Here is The Atlantic‘s list of banned books. The first one is a surprise. Harper...

This is one of the times when I missed the BLS annual adjustment also. RJS was right on the money this morning in reporting it. A portion of the 467,000 was due to adjustments in December and January data. RJS, MarketWatch 666, Employers Add 467,000 Jobs in January, Unemployment Rate Rises to 4.0% The Employment Situation Summary for January from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated a decent level of job creation during the month, while the...

Oil supplies at a 10 year low;  SPR at a 19 year low, total oil & products supplies at 7 1/2 year low; Omicron hit to demand leads to largest 5 week increase of gasoline inventories in 32 years RJS: The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA, Focus on Fracking US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending January 28th indicated that despite a jump in our oil imports and a drop in our oil...

J.P. McJefferson writes: “On a Friday afternoon in February, I finally sense a glimmer of hope. Mike Pence finding truth in his heart and openly confronting Trump & his lot of criminals by reinforcing the fact that he had no authority to overturn the election and saying Trump is “wrong”. A direct slap in the face to Trump. Maybe it will be the beginning of the formal split in the party between right & wrong/evil. Along with Liz Cheney...