The Angry Bear

. H/T Holly Nelson

I have met this man on several occasions. He is one of the most unimposing and quiet people I have ever run across. You would never know he is one of the most knowledgeable and capable constitutional attorneys in the nation having testified to Congress on SCOTUS appointments. Erwin Chemerinsky: In Marbury vs. Madison, in 1803, the Supreme Court declared that it is “the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.”Quoting Chief...

(Dan here…lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) by Robert Waldmann Nomoremisterniceblog almost states the bitter truth, but he’s too nice to tell us what fools we are. He wrote: I don’t want to relitigate the McGovern and Mondale campaigns, but Dukakis? “Free everything and impossible promises” weren’t what defeated him. My comment I want to relitigate events of 1984, which Delaney has sent down the memory hole. Mondale was not hammered because he...

The housing choke collar I have a new post up at Seeking Alpha, discussing how, even though sales went down last year, and have already bottomed, house prices have as usual, followed into decline with a lag. Beyond that, I discuss the concept of a “housing choke collar,’ similar to the “oil choke collar” I used to write about in 2010-14, whereby prices repeatedly approach the tipping point of unaffordability, causing sales to drop off, causing interest...

June 2019 personal income and spending The wage-earner/consumer remains in decent shape, and a lack of inflation (continued low gas prices!) continues to be able to hide a multitude of sins. That’s the message from this morning’s June report for personal income and spending. Nominally, income rose +0.4%, while spending rose +0.3%. Since inflation as measured by the PCE price index only increased 0.1%, that means both real income and real spending rose...

Climate Equity: What Is It? While action against climate change languishes, the rhetoric keeps getting more intense.  For several years now it hasn’t been enough to demand climate policy; we need climate justice.  We will not only eliminate fossil fuels in a decade or three, we will solve the problems of poverty and discrimination, and all in a single political package.  It sounds good, but what does it mean? You might look for an answer in new...

A Serious Problem For Dems It is that progressive Dems some time ago glommed onto the idea that protectionism is “progressive.”  It has been going on so long and has become so ingrained that Bernie Sanders has been running around bragging about how he is more protectionist than Trump.  Elizabeth Warren has been a bit more subtle about it, calling to renegotiate all existing US trade agreements to make them super strong on labor and environmental...

Barro’s Misstated Case for Federal Reserve Independence I guess I should applaud Robert Barro for standing up for the independence of the Federal Reserve and hoping it can resist political pressure to lower interest rates too much. But there are two aspects of his case that strike me as silly to say the least starting with his opening sentence: In the early 1980s, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, was able to choke off runaway...

Trump’s trade wars can still lead to a producer led recession I wrote a piece last week for Seeking Alpha explaining that, while the consumer side of the economy is doing reasonably well, a recession could still come in via the producer side. A Producer-Led Recession Remains Viable As usual, clicking over and reading should be educational for you, and puts a penny or two in my pocket. Thus, the idea that no recession can happen absent a 20% YoY slide in...