The Angry Bear

Conspiracy Theories: How to Pick Out the Plausible Ones This is an age of rampant conspiratorialism.  Bill Gates is behind the pandemic because he wants to shoot you full of vaccines.  No wait, it’s all those 5G cell towers.  Or maybe it’s bioterrorism from China.  Or just a hoax perpetrated by international capital to undermine Donald Trump, the people’s tribune.  The right wing disinformation machine cranks out this stuff constantly, but paranoid...

Conspiracy Theories: How to Pick Out the Plausible Ones This is an age of rampant conspiratorialism.  Bill Gates is behind the pandemic because he wants to shoot you full of vaccines.  No wait, it’s all those 5G cell towers.  Or maybe it’s bioterrorism from China.  Or just a hoax perpetrated by international capital to undermine Donald Trump, the people’s tribune.  The right wing disinformation machine cranks out this stuff constantly, but paranoid...

I have been monitoring  the close relationship between bond yields and monetary velocity ( personal income/zero maturity money) for years without coming to strong conclusion about what to make of it.  In particular, it displays the long term secular rise and fall of bond yields before and after 1980.. I do not know of any other economic variable that parallels bond yields so tightly for such a long period.  OK, first question.  Which way does the causal...

I have been monitoring  the close relationship between bond yields and monetary velocity ( personal income/zero maturity money) for years without coming to strong conclusion about what to make of it.  In particular, it displays the long term secular rise and fall of bond yields before and after 1980.. I do not know of any other economic variable that parallels bond yields so tightly for such a long period.  OK, first question.  Which way does the causal...

“Dr. Doom” At It Again: Predicts 10-Year Depression That would be Nouriel Roubini of NYU who got his moniker back during the Great Recession, which he called pretty well in 2006.  He did this clearly yesterday in an interview in The Intelligencer, although he has been pushing something like this for some time now, bringing in all sorts of things like climate change and more pandemics to reinforce this long run forecasr, although he thinks in a decade...

“Dr. Doom” At It Again: Predicts 10-Year Depression That would be Nouriel Roubini of NYU who got his moniker back during the Great Recession, which he called pretty well in 2006.  He did this clearly yesterday in an interview in The Intelligencer, although he has been pushing something like this for some time now, bringing in all sorts of things like climate change and more pandemics to reinforce this long run forecasr, although he thinks in a decade...

Coronavirus, the economy, and the election: the jury is still out on all three There is some housing data out today; I’ll probably have a post up about it tomorrow at Seeking Alpha, and I’ll link to it here. Meanwhile, the jury is still out on the effects of the “reopening” of many States on coronavirus infections. Here’s a graph of the 7 day average of tests, new infections, hospitalizations, and deaths, divided between the Boston, NYC, Philadelphia...

A Compromise on Liability So Mitch McConnell and the senate Republicans want blanket employer liability protection as the price of another round of economic support.  They have this leverage because Democrats kept postponing their agenda until they were the only ones with a list of things they wanted to spend money on. (This illustrates classic bargaining theory to a T.  Bargaining power depends on how much you think you will lose if the agreement is...

Woke Is Reactionary: The Small Business Lending Edition We live in a drastically unequal society.  Everywhere you look you will find injustice, constraint and exploitation.  Being a member of a racial or other minority increases the odds you will end up on the short end, so what should we do about it?  There’s a progressive solution, to change the system so injustice, constraint and exploitation are minimized.  And then there’s the woke solution, to...