The Angry Bear

We made many mistakes in our response to the coronavirus over the past year.  One of the most critical was our failure to massively expand our capacity to produce coronavirus tests and masks and other PPE.  As many economists including Paul Romer noted last spring, mass testing and wide distribution of high quality masks would probably have allowed us to crush the virus and return to something close to normal life even in the absence of a vaccine. ...

Before Science, treating the symptoms of an illness was all we had. Along our way, using trial and error, we found a few things that worked. The big breakthroughs came when we started to look for the causes of an illness. The association of an illness with toxins was deducible. Then, as we knew more and could see farther, we found that most of our physical illnesses were caused by such other things as bacteria, and viruses. Still and yet, we see...

Several comments on my last post on the economic difficulties of the people who attacked the Capitol took aim at their characters in one way or another. I certainly do not want to defend the Capitol invaders in any way.  I think they should be vigorously prosecuted.  However, it is critically important to step back from the violent horror of the assault and think strategically about how we can use public policy to reduce the risk of political...

The Slightly Less Than August Back in the days of Adm. Rickover’s Navy, we were taught the technical term CRUD for the radioactive metallic deposits found in the reactor’s coolant system, that the word stood for Chalk River Undetermined Deposits, Chalk River being a river in Canada with a Nuclear Lab named after it, which was mostly true excepting maybe the part about heavy water. This was long, long before the Republican Party started sending the...

As is very rare, I find myself disagreeing with Josh Marshall who asked “What Were the Democratic Senators Thinking?” when they agreed to accept Representative Jaime Herrera-Butler’s assertions (that Trump sided with the insurgents over minority leader McCarthy) in writing when Trump’s lawyers stipulated that they could be assumed to be accurate. First I will play amateur lawyer (and link to an actual lawyer who contested Marshall and was posted...

Strategy New Media Inc is our new host and IT fix-it company. MEV, our previous host, had ceased supporting WordPress platforms. so a move was mandatory. As of last night, Strategy is migrating AB to a new server, so as some have experienced difficulties in commenting I apologize. I have alerted Strategy to these glitches. ...

Is Bitcoin Really Real Money? Ontological and Epistemological Questions  The movement to make Bitcoin into a de facto form of money has taken a step forward when Elon Musk declared that he would be purchasing over a billion btc.  Some are claiming that Musk did this to pump up an alternative asset because Tesla stock is overpriced and may fall hard soon.  But who knows? Anyway, although btc fell today, it has reached dramatic new highs well over...

Is Bitcoin Really Real Money? Ontological and Epistemological Questions  The movement to make Bitcoin into a de facto form of money has taken a step forward when Elon Musk declared that he would be purchasing over a billion btc.  Some are claiming that Musk did this to pump up an alternative asset because Tesla stock is overpriced and may fall hard soon.  But who knows? Anyway, although btc fell today, it has reached dramatic new highs well over...

Tags: open thread

Tags: open thread