The Angry Bear

Kevin Drum has a post up about the present and future of EV charging stalls in the US. As of 2023, the number was 184,000, with public charging stalls outnumbering Tesla stalls 6:1. Is that a lot or a little? Well, lots of people say that they’re holding off buying EVs because of the range, which is still less than most ICE cars. One way to mitigate that concern is to have more charging stalls than gas station nozzles*. So how many gasoline...

Health Care Reform and the 2024 U.S. Elections — Low Visibility, High Stakes. by Jonathan Oberlander, Ph.D. New England Journal of Medicine Exploring the what-ifs in healthcare and the ACA in an election year. What if Trump wins the presidency and Repubs control the House and the Senate. The author discusses the alternatives also. Abortion and reproductive health have emerged as a major focus in the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign....

by Bill McBride Calculated Risk Single-family serious delinquencies increased slightly in August, and multi-family serious delinquencies decreased slightly. Freddie Mac reported that the Single-Family serious delinquency rate in August was 0.52%, up from 0.51% June. Freddie’s rate is down year-over-year from 0.55% in August 2023.  This is below the pre-pandemic lows. Freddie’s serious delinquency rate peaked in February 2010 at 4.20%...

I only provided a portion of the report and the 6 figures (one through six). The full report on Income can be found here: Income in the United States: 2023, Gloria Guzman and Melissa Kollar. The economy was not as bad as the politicians and trump make it out to be, The numbers do not support their contention. Some stats: As reported, median household income in 2023 was higher than in 2022. Income inequality was not significantly different...

if long-term interest rate r is less than the trend growth rate of GDP g Yesterday (technically very early today) I promised a post on why long-term Treasury interest rates are very important. In particular it is very important if the long-term interest rate r is less than the trend growth rate of GDP g. If r<g then the public sector intertemporal budget constraint is not binding. This means that public policy is not even Pareto efficient. In...

Is it ok to forgo the “needless to say” phrase to introduce an idea or expectation already known? Yeah probably. What is going to happen on October 1 is a cage fight or no holds barred mental-wrestling event with no physical contact. The two VP candidates will go at it on national TV with probable open (or hot) mikes (it sells more advertising). Moderators will not be able to challenge a candidate’s statements for authenticity. I am sure we will...

You may have read about “blue zones,” certain communities that have an unusually large number of centenarians: Loma Linda in California, Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia in Italy, Nicoya in Costa Rica, and Ikaria in Greece. Since we can’t all move there, the next best thing would be to discover the key to longevity in these places.“The overall populations within these blue zones, as well as those individuals who appear to be living into extreme old age,...

I have a collection of sources I can pull from to use here at Angry Bear. Joyce @ Civil Discourse is one of them. Prof Heather Cox Richardson @ Letters from an American is another. Robert Reich, Merrill Goozner @ GoozNews, Lloyd Alter @ Carbon Upfront, etc. It allows me to present information I would have to hunt for and then edit it to fit. There are others too. I think they are pretty interesting. PS: I joined these sites to read and gather...

Why have they increased so much. The US Treasury constant maturity 10-year interest rate has increased dramatically since the FED started fighting inflation (after falling dramatically during the Covid 19 epidemic). The increase is not unusual — Monetary policy effects GDP and employment through medium and long term interest rates, especially including the interest rate on 30 year mortgages. But I think it should be surprising. Before going...

“Comet of the century” will be visible for first time in 80,000 years. Here’s how to glimpse it (msn.com) The passing of a comet can bring feelings of either dread or wonder. A mysterious celestial event known as the Star of Bethlehem. It was said to have accompanied the birth of Jesus Christ. It could have been a comet appearing so suddenly, staying for so long and seen crossing the sky. More recently, science fiction movies like “Deep...