The Angry Bear

The D Word Yes, depression, and not the psychological type, although the economic type leads to the psychological type, whether ot not it is the other  way around (see Keynes’ “animal spirits). I often make fun of Robert J. Samuelson in the Washington Post, but in Washington Post today he raised the possibility that we are going into a depression, not just a bad recession.  On TV this evening I heard Austen Goolsby throw it out as well.  I suspect we...

Coronavirus dashboard for April 2: nationwide lockdown nearly complete, but the surge in testing has completely stalled  – by New Deal democrat Here is the update through yesterday (April 1) Close to 90% of the US population is now under lockdown, and it appears to be lowering the rate of exponential growth of new infections. But testing in the past 6 days has plateaued at about 100,000/day and is not keeping pace at all with the growth in new...

Why the States must surge medical supplies, explained in two easy points by New Deal democrat Point 1: The most recent “plan” of the Trump Administration is to extend the lockdown through the end of April. It is based on the below graph from a foundation endowed by Bill and Melinda Gates: The graph anticipates roughly 100,000 deaths during April and May, peaking in mid-April at about 2500 deaths per day. But it also presumes that the lockdown remains...

In 2020 A March Of Madness, Econospeak Just before the end of February, President Trump declared that there were only 15 Covid-19 cases in the US, and that “they will soon go to zero.”  Deaths from COVID 19 now passed 3,000 (March 30th) and yesterday Trump declared that because we might have had over 2 million dead if nothing had been done, it would show “we did a good job” if deaths kept to “only” 100,000 to 200,000.  To do this “good job” he has...

Coronavirus dashboard for April 1 by New Deal democrat Here is the update through yesterday (March 31) Over 75% of the US population is now under lockdown, and it appears to be lowering the rate of exponential growth of new infections. Based on South Korea’s experience, a ratio of 15:1 in total tests to results showing infection is the level where there can be some confidence that the infections have been contained. But testing in the past 5 days has...

Remdesivir and Transfer Pricing Gilead Sciences is conducting phase III trials to explore whether this treatment – which did not turn out to be effective against Ebola – might be effective in treating COVID-19. We all hope it will be and if it does pass phase III trials, national income tax authorities will later have to address the transfer pricing implications of any profits Gilead Sciences generates. This blog post is the first of two with this one...

Richard Epstein: Peak Dishonesty, Econospeak Epstein is the doyen of libertarian legal theorists. Larry Tisch Professor of law at NYU and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, he has vast influence throughout the conservative world, including the White House. His latest jag is calling for an early end to isolation policies to contain the coronavirus. In a nutshell, his argument is that the virus responsible for this pandemic exhibits a range of...

“Is Pompeo The Worst Secretary Of State Ever?”, Econospeak, by Barkley Rosser This is the title of a column in today’s Washington Post by Jackson Diehl. His answer is an unequivocal “yes,” and I must say on thinking about it I know of no others clearly worse than him, maybe not even any as bad as him. Diehl focuses on some general incompetence but then focuses on two specific issues that I have posted on here previously. The most important one, which is...

A presidential comment on New Mexico Governor Lujan Grisham concerns: Grisham: “We’re seeing incredible spikes in the Navajo Nation, and this is going to be an issue where we’re going to have to figure that out and think about maybe testing and surveillance opportunities, The rate of infection, at least on the New Mexico side — although we’ve got several Arizona residents in our hospitals — we’re seeing a much higher hospital rate, a much younger hospital...

A last look at the 2009 – 2020 expansion by New Deal democrat All of the most important economic from February has been reported. Since that was the last month before coronavirus derailed everything, I thought I would take a look back and see what shape the economy was in just before the moment of impact. As usual, the 4 coincident indicators that the NBER usually looks for in determining whether the economy is in expansion or contraction are: industrial...