The Angry Bear

In a post today at Econlib, David Henderson writes: Postscript: There was an unusually high percentage of good comments on my op/ed on the WSJ site. Here’s one I just noticed: In Michigan, our Governor ordered auto insurance companies to issue rebates – due to folks driving less I guess. But amazingly, our Governor who is owned by the teachers union, gave no such order  to rebate the portion of property taxes that go toward public schools. Even though...

Coronavirus dashboard for July 28: the “pain threshold” exists, and leads to a decline in new cases Total US coronavirus cases: 4,275,188 Average daily cases last 7 days: 65,896 Total US coronavirus deaths: 140,309 Average daily deaths last 7 days: 1,004 (Source: COVID Tracking Project) Several months ago I wrote: my forecast over the past month [has been] that the population of the US as a whole lacks the political and social will to beat the...

Goodbye To The Last True Georgist Economist: Mason Gaffney Mason (“Mase”) Gaffney died on July 26 in Redlands, CA of Covid-19 at age 96.  He was both a great guy as well as arguably what the title to this says: “the last true Georgist economist,” with such economists being followers of Henry George, whose 1878 book, Progress and Poverty, was the best-selling book on economics in the US during the 19th century.  George was a journalist who ran...

June durable goods orders continue rebound Last week I wrote a synopsis of the short leading indicators and what they suggested about the ultimate Presidential election result in November. Basically, they have improved over the last several months and suggested the polls would tighten compared with the present. Among the missing June indicators were durable goods. They were reported this morning, and continued their sharp rebound from May, making up in...

“Republicans finally get “death panels,” Hullabaloo, Tom Sullivan, July, 26, 2020 Dr. Jose Vasquez, the health officer for Starr County, Texas located on the US-Mexico border “The situation is desperate.” At the only hospital in the county, over 50% of patients are testing positive for the COVID-19 virus — 40 new coronavirus cases were reported Thursday. Starr County Memorial Hospital in Rio Grande City made plans to set up a committee to decide which...

The 2020 Presidential and Senate polling nowcasts: we need more small State polling! For the past five weeks I have posted a projection of the Electoral College vote based solely on State rather than national polls (since after all that is how the College operates) that have been reported in the last 30 days, using the following formula: – States where the race is closer than 3% are shown as toss-ups. – States where the range is between 3% to 5% are...

Managing A Zoom Conference As of the end of this week, I completed chairing the 30th annual international conference of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences, with 54 participants from around the world.  It basically went well, and it was kind of cool to make introductory remarks at 8 AM during EDT, with somebody on at 6 AM their time in Montana and someone else on at 10 PM their time in Sydney, Australia.  It can be done, and...

by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. There was no significant change this week in any of the indicator time frames.  I expect that to change in a hurry once the pain of the ending of the supplemental $600/week unemployment benefits is felt. That was all going to spending, and that spending is going to very abruptly stop. As usual, clicking over and reading brings you up to the virtual moment on the economy, and rewards me...

New home sales roar back to pre-pandemic levels At some point – probably three or four months after Joe Biden takes the oath of office on January 20 of next year, G*d willing – the coronavirus pandemic is going to be brought under control in the US. At that point the long leading indicators are going to be very important in terms of the immediate direction of the US economy. And the news on that score is very good, as shown by new home sales for June,...