The Angry Bear

What are we going to do about Mitch McConnell and his enabler Jim Manchin ? McConnell is blocking the establishment of committees for the 117th Senate. This means that the committees with Republican Chairs and Republican majorities will exist and operate in the Senate with a Democratic majority. He demands that Democrats promise not to eliminate the filibuster before he ends the filibuster of the resolution setting up the 117th Senate. One simple...

What are we going to do about Mitch McConnell and his enabler Jim Manchin ? McConnell is blocking the establishment of committees for the 117th Senate. This means that the committees with Republican Chairs and Republican majorities will exist and operate in the Senate with a Democratic majority. He demands that Democrats promise not to eliminate the filibuster before he ends the filibuster of the resolution setting up the 117th Senate. One simple...

Fifth and last. Not relevant to the USA. Back in the day when US unions weren’t totally feeble, MacDonald and Solow wrote a brilliant paper on collective bargaining and tax based incomes policy. Imagine a world in which firms must negotiation with unions (for example imagine Europe). The unions have two aims — they want high wages and they want high employment in the sector they represent. This means that a GM&UAW right to manage contract...

Fifth and last. Not relevant to the USA. Back in the day when US unions weren’t totally feeble, MacDonald and Solow wrote a brilliant paper on collective bargaining and tax based incomes policy. Imagine a world in which firms must negotiation with unions (for example imagine Europe). The unions have two aims — they want high wages and they want high employment in the sector they represent. This means that a GM&UAW right to manage contract...

How Recent Supreme Court Decisions Have Damaged Both the Court and the Constitution There’s a pattern: In November of 2000, immediately following the very close, highly contested, presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore, John Roberts, a lawyer in private practice who had clerked for Chief Justice Rehnquist, rushed to Florida to be legal adviser to then Governor Jeb Bush during the to be decisive Florida recount; a recount...

A detailed, updated look at the housing market Existing home sales for December were reported this morning at 6.76 million annualized, just below the October 10 Year+ high of 6.86 million. Although existing home sales are about 90% of the entire housing market, they are less important economically than new housing construction, which has multiplier effects which last 12-24 months. But right now both existing home sales and new home...

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...