The Angry Bear

by Ken Melvin The Road to Calvary From: What to Think To: What to Believe From 15 to 30mins of TV Evening News in 1970 to 24hr TV News in 1980; then on to Fox News in 1996. From the 1950s print journalists and radio news broadcasts, to TV Evening News, to 24hr TV telegenic news readers, to Fox News, to Donald Trump. From the trusted Cronkite, and Huntley – Brinkley nightly news, to cable 24hr CNN opining/news, to Fox News (the most-watched cable news)...

A note about the weekly and monthly economic data For the past month or so, with the exception of the weekly catastrophe of new jobless claims it hasn’t been very important to keep track of the economic data. Now that it is May, that will start to change with the weekly data as of next week (reporting on this week). The monthly data fo May, of course, won’t be reported for until June starts. That’s because the month of April was fully involved in the...

by Joseph Joyce Is There a Future for FDI? Among the economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic will be a drop in foreign direct investment activity. The latest issue of the OECD’s FDI In Figures forecasts a decline of more than 30% in 2020 in FDI flows, even under an optimistic scenario of a recovery in the second half of this year. The falloff reflects not only the deterioration in global economic activity, but also the responses of firms to...

A good Anne Appelbaum read here at The Atlantic to which I subscribe to in print and via computer. The print-version makes for a brief case stuffer when I am flying somewhere far away. The Youtube depicts China as a Lego terra-cotta warrior with a low masculine voice and the United States as a Lego Statue of Liberty with a high, squeaky voice. “The rest of the World is Laughing at Donald Trump” The official Chinese news agency “Xinhua,” is poking at Trump...

Voters typically hold the President and his party responsible for the state of the country at the time of elections.  This means that Trump and the Republicans have a strong incentive to support an aggressive federal response to the Covid-19 epidemic and the economic collapse.  Under normal rules of political engagement, this should allow the House Democrats to extract concessions from the Republicans in negotiations over the government’s response to the...

I frequently read a debate about whether, when assessing anti covid 19 performance, one should look at deaths per capita or deaths on days since 1000 deaths. Like everything involving Americans, this has become a pro v contra Trump debate — clearly he wants deaths per capita (and the absolute number of tests performed). The arguments are as follows. for number of deaths on time since a certain number was reached, it is argued that all countries are at...

Coronavirus dashboard for May 4: new infections, deaths continue slow decline Here is the update through yesterday (May 3). As usual, significant developments are in italics. The bottom line is the same as several days ago: trends in new infections, deaths, and in testing have all turned positive – if not positive enough. But the good news remains primarily a NY story. I have discontinued giving the % increases day/day in infections and deaths. They...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for April 27 – May 1 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. As with the Great Recession, once the economy has gone over a cliff, the next question is, where is the bottom of the cliff? At least on a weekly basis, the data didn’t get materially worse in a YoY sense this week. Is that the bottom of the cliff? Or are there further, worse, second order effects to come? We’ll start to get...

(Dan here…Great comments for this post at Econospeak) Planet of the Humans: A De-Growth Manifesto Planet of the Humans, directed by Jeff Gibbs but featuring Michael Moore as its “presenter”, has been viewed by almost five and a half million people since it popped up on YouTube last month.  In case you haven’t heard, it’s quite a provocation, and the response from almost every quarter of the environmental movement has been outrage.  It traffics in...