The Angry Bear

Why Has AMLO Delayed Congratulating Biden On His Inauguration?  Maybe he has now done it, although I have been unable to find any reports of him doing so.  But almost alone among world leaders, I think joined only by Kim Jong Un of North Korea, Mexicos’s President known as “AMLO” did not basically immediately congratulate Joe Biden on his inauguration. Even very pro-Trump Brazilian President Bolsonaro did, expressing a hope to have good and...

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for January 18 – 22 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The pandemic, and the monetary and interest rate responses to it, are dictating which sectors are improving and which are stagnated or worse. But as vaccinations slowly progress, in springtime there may be growth in the garden. As usual, clicking over and reading rewards me a little bit for the work I put in,...

From now on, these posts will be reviews of the established literature. I will assume, as is standard, that people are completely selfish. The point is to show that, even if people are selfish, there are desirable incentive effects of income taxation. As is often the case, the results of 50 year old theory turn out to depend on the assumption of symmetric information. If some agents know things that other agents don’t know, then free market...

“Unity,” they cried. “First, we must have unity.” “Whose unity shall we have, yours or mine,” I asked? Knowing there was a Unitarian Church nearby, I stopped by and asked the minister. This ordinate tells me that theirs is all about a god of one; a unity god. Always wondered. Is there such a thing as unity of minds? A singularity? Called up an old physicist friend; says it’s something to do with essence, he thinks. This unity you are...

Letters from an American, Newsletter History Professor Heather Cox Richardson at Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, Boston College chronicles today’s political landscape. Because it is difficult to understand today’s politics without an outline of America’s Constitution, and laws, and the economy, and social customs; the professor’s newsletter explores what it means, and what it has meant, to be an American. Professor Richardson follows...

Dale Coberly is a writer and frequent commenter at Angry Bear Blog who is well known for his understanding of Social Security and his proposed Northwest Plan. The Northwest plan was recognized by the Social Security administration as a solution to fixing the shortfall in funding now thought to be in 2034. An article about Social Security appeared in the Washington Post today. As written by another journalist on the Social Security beat who knows...

Extending START  It is not a big headline story among all the other things newly inaugurated Joe Biden is doing, but it is being reported that despite a generally more hostile approach to Russia, he has agreed with what Russian President Putin has said he wants, which is to simply extend the current nuclear weapons START agreement for five more years. It is possible that out of annoyance with Biden Putin might somehow at this point create a...

Initial jobless claims: still elevated compared with several months ago, another negative jobs report for January a possibility Initial jobless claims this week came within a hair of meeting my criteria for a change to an upward trend.  On a unadjusted basis, new jobless claims declined by 151,303 to 960,668. Seasonally adjusted claims also declined by 26,000 to 900,000 (last week’s numbers were also adjusted downward from 965,000 to 926,000)....

(Better late than never…Dan) This is a really slow news week – on the economy!  My retrospective on the Trump Presidency is nearly complete and will be published tomorrow morning.In the meantime, here is a brief note on the Small Business Optimism index which was updated for December last week, showing a steep decline across the board. Here it is: What happened? Was there some earthshaking economic news? A hidden cataclysm of supply or demand?...

I don’t know if I should try to make my contributions to AngryBear a noahpinion sub substack or if I should put this over at my personal blog, but I am always stimulated by Noah’s posts . His most recent “No one knows how much the government can borrow” is on a topic I’ve mentioned here (and here also Brad all following Blanchard): How much should we worry about the huge and rapidly growing US national debt ? Noah wrote that he doesn’t know and...