The Angry Bear

Coronavirus dashboard for October 14: winter is coming Total US confirmed cases: 7,806,805* Average cases last 7 days: 51,038 Total US deaths: 215,887 Average deaths last 7 days: 714*Actual cases probably more like 14 million, or over 4% of the US populationSource: COVID Tracking ProjectToday let’s take a look at the most recent upsurge in COVID not just in the US, but in the entire West.Here is the 7 day average of new cases per capita in the US,...

Consumer prices rise a “normal” 0.2% in September In September Consumer prices rose a “normal” 0.2%, the first such typical increase since the pandemic began (blue in the graph below): For the past 40 years, recessions had typically happened when CPI less energy costs (red) had risen to close to or over 3%/year. We are nowhere near that now (last 15 years shown in graph): Because wages are “stickier” than prices, typically as recessions beat...

Yes, yes, I know Judge Amy Barrett has not been confirmed to be a Justice and serve on SCOTUS yet. I believe it to be a slam dunk for her to be confirmed by Senators without morals or a conscience. [embedded content]There are times I believe we should have non attorneys in the Senate and then this occurs where an attorney is friendly or at least on target with the issues. Senator Whitehouse expands on what he described yesterday using Abood as an example,...

The clip by Senator Whitehouse that Daniel Becker posted here is excellent.  For those of you who prefer reading, this issue brief he wrote is also very good: It turns out that Republican appointees to the Supreme Court have, with remarkable consistency, delivered rulings that advantage the big corporate and special interests that are, in turn, the political lifeblood of the Republican Party. Several of these decisions have been particularly flagrant and...

This is what I believe Eric Kramer is asking for.  If we are ever going to fix the justice system and ultimately this nation, what Senator Whitehouse presented today needs to be internalized by everyone. Yes, ACA, abortion, gay marriage.  They are major issue, I have a stake in 2 of them.  But – a big ass BUT – the real game is the machine that has been operating for a very long time and honed to a run as smooth as a screaming F1 engine.  And it’s...

There is a big push by trump and Republicans to bring a Covid to market quickly. Remember the Thalidomide Disaster, The Morning Call, May 12, 2020 Thalidomide In the rush to find a vaccine or treatment for the coronavirus, let’s not forget the bitter lesson learned in the 1950s and ’60s when thalidomide was prescribed to pregnant women for morning sickness. Thalidomide was approved for European use in 1957 although it was never tested on pregnant women....

Democrats so far have focused on the risk that Amy Coney Barrett poses to the Affordable Care Act.  This is completely understandable as electioneering.  The ACA was one of their best issues in 2018, and it will be again this year.  But . . . By focusing narrowly on the ACA, the Democrats are missing an opportunity to educate the public more broadly on the role of the Court and the danger posed by a highly conservative and partisan set of Justices.  The...

In The Face Of Total Turbulence, Go Totally Conventional For The Nobel Prize  I have noted in various places that I could not make a forecast this year on the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel because of all the turbulence on so many fronts going on.  So it occurred to me that the committee might avoid political controversy by going technical, although I thought it more likely they would give it for something in...

This chart can be found here at EPI: Figure 1