The Angry Bear

Do Languages Get Simpler When They Get More Complicated?  Oh, a minor diversion from the usual political economy stuff that goes up here.   This is triggered by an article in last week’s The Economist on the nearly dead San language, Nluu.  It has only two living fully fluent speakers alive, both in their 80s.  The San languages are among the world’s most ancient, although arguably reflecting a simpler world than the one we live in, although...

Tags: open thread

Needing a new shirt? Pair of pants? Sports jacket? Suit? Log on, get your body profiled, if you haven’t recently; chose material. Screen shows what you would look like in the item while you make changes if any. Place the order and item shows up at your door in 7 days; still untouched by human hands. Prêt à porter? Même chose. Could fly to Albuquerque to see your, or your spouses’, mom and dad. Or, you could avoid the old hassle of the airport, of...

“Revised 1st Quarter GDP Report Still Shows Growth at a 6.4% Rate,” Marketwatch 666, Commenter RJS and analyst The Second Estimate of our 1st Quarter GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis indicated that our real output of goods and services grew at a 6.4% rate in the 1st quarter, unchanged from the 6.4% growth rate reported in the advance estimate last month, as upward revisions to growth of real personal consumption expenditures and to growth...

I think it is now possible to look back on the debate on the effectiveness of non-standard monetary policy at the (near) zero lower bound. I will now “mark my beliefs to market” – J B DeLong. I think it is also a mildly worthwhile exercise, because it is relevant to the current debate about fiscal policy. A key argument for massive fiscal stimulus, well greater than any estimated output gap, is that making predictions, especially about the...

April Personal Income Down a Record 13.1%, Disposable Personal Income Down a Record 14.6%, Savings Falls 54.0%, Marketwatch 666, RJS The April report on Personal Income and Outlays from the Bureau of Economic Analysis reflects the partial unwinding of the March government stimulus in just about every metric it tracks except for prices, which are said to be “transitory“, influenced by temporary shortages and supply chain issues….as you’ll recall,...

Real personal income has completely made up its recession losses, now exceeds pre-recession peak The last of the 4 monthly coincident markers for whether the economy is in recession vs. expansion was reported this morning for April. Let’s take a look. In nominal terms, personal income declined -13.1%, taking back most, not by no means all, of March’s big 20.7% gain. After taking inflation into account, in real terms, it declined -13.7%....

The Trumpification of Xi Jinping  The Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) has achieved great outcomes over the last several decades, especially after the late Deng Xiaoping took effective control of the nation from Maoist holdovers.  He set a model of indirect and collective leadership in contrast with Mao Zedong who ruled nearly absolutely for nearly three decades, while building and enforcing a cult of personality dedicated to himself. Of the top...

“Americans stress over ‘unshakeable burden’ of student loan payments,” The Guardian, Michael Sainato, May 2020 The nation can alleviate one person of their debt multiple times; but, it can not do so for the younger contingent consisting of minorities and white former students who would add to the growth of the economy if freed. Much ofd this debt consists of usurious penalties, the interest on those penalties, forbearance interest and the interest...

New home sales decline in April, revised sharply lower for March; prices continue to skyrocket, while inventory increases This morning both new home sales and two price indexes for houses were released for April, completing our view of that important long leading sector. As anticipated, not only did new home sales decline for the month, but March was also hugely revised to the downside ( over 10%!): Figure 1 With these revisions,...