The Angry Bear

Jobless claims continue to show a sideways to an upward trend New jobless claims declined this week, but are still significantly above their recent pandemic lows, while continuing claims, seasonally adjusted, made a new pandemic low. The downward trend in claims has clearly ended for now, although whether the current trend is sideways or upward remains unclear. In particular, there is a sizable but by no means certain likelihood that...

Trump As The Grinch Who Stole Christmas  So the Congress struggled for months after the House passed a $3.3 trillion followup Covid relief bill, which Senate Majority Leader McConnell blocked and kept blocking.  House Speaker Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin kept negotiating and coming up with this or that proposal, only to mostly have McConnell shoot it down, or sometimes Pres. Trump himself doing so.  Finally after the election, and with...

Here is a simple thought experiment on the use of scarce vaccine supplies.Suppose that we had tested the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines with one dose per person and discovered that they were 85% effective at preventing covid-19. However, due to an administrative error, we gave some people two doses, and when we analyzed the data it turned out that a two-dose regimen was 95% effective at preventing covid-19. Only 200 million doses of vaccine will be...

As a bit of a comparison, the 2018 Distribution of Federal Payroll and Income Taxes shows 761,000 household taxpayers making up 4 tenths of 1% of all taxpayers having the highest income in the US. I am not sure if we can get it as finite as what India shows in wealth. With a population of ~1.3 billion, the wealth of 831 individuals amounts to 25% of the nation’s GDP. The 831 are calling the shots for farmers in India and the nation. “Millions of...

Rolling Out the Vaccine  This morning’s (Dec. 25) New York Times offers a panel discussion on the question of who should get vaccinated against Covid first.  Broadly speaking, they take a utilitarian position: it’s interesting that none disagreed with the positions taken by panelist Peter Singer, the world’s most prominent utilitarian philosopher.  And I wouldn’t either, except for one thing. The vaccines approved by the FDA, along with those...

“He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.” ―Roy L. Smith

MacRumors: Apple’s New Privacy-Focused Tracking Prompt Begins Appearing for iOS 14 Users As a privacy measure for their customers, Apple will be requiring developers of iPhone and iPad “apps” to request permission from users to track their activity across other apps and websites for personalized advertising purposes starting early next year. iOS 14.4 should be publicly released in January or February. Facebook pulled out the usual canard; “They...

I am very sympathetic to Robert Waldmann’s argument that we should give twice as many people one dose of the new Pfizer/Moderna vaccines, at least until supply constraints are eased, instead of following the FDA approved vaccination protocol and giving everyone two doses right from the beginning. What follows is a rough way of thinking about the logic and perhaps the magnitudes involved. Let me emphasize that this is just a finger exercise and I am...

Decline in personal income and spending adds to evidence of reversal of economic rebound This morning’s release of personal income and spending for November adds to the evidence that the economic recovery from the onset of the pandemic has stalled, and potentially reversed. Real personal income declined -1.3% in November, the first decline since April. Real personal spending also declined -0.4%. Real personal spending is now down -2.7% from its...

(Dan here…I lifted reader Michael Smith piece on water use in open thread Dec. 22. The topic is well worth writing about…AB used to discuss this issue regularly starting in 2008 during the severe drought in the US when the southeast was contemplating court action amongst themselves to ensure their own supplies.. Search “water” in AB for a sample) Michael Smith writes: I should probably write a longer piece on this but I’ll try to summarize...