The Angry Bear

(Dan here…lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) The Ethics of Clinical Trials In a clinical trial the therapy is decided by a pseudo random number generator. How can this be ethical ? People are treated differently for no reason related to different interests different values and priorities or even different merit (assuming merit can differ).There is a utilitarian rational for clinical trials. Through such trials doctors learn, and that knowledge is...

(Dan here…lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) “If Only Obama had Done the Things Obama Actually Did” J-chait Jon Chait remains as enthusiastic about Barack Obama as I am, so it isn’t surprising that he wrote a blog post entitled “If Only Obama had Done the Things Obama Actually Did”. But the title does raise a question. Is Chait dumping on the very serious centrists (cough David Brooks couch) who argued that Obama should reach out to Republicans...

Two economic notes on the shutdown The government shutdown is the economic equivalent of sustaining -800,000, or -0.5%, layoffs. The last time we saw that was in the Panic of 2008. So needless to say, it is very surprising that last week saw fewer official layoffs than at any time since November 1969. On a population-weighted basis, this is an all-time low. This entire behavior of first time jobless claims during this expansion speaks to employers only...

The Nobel Economists Petitiion on Carbon Tax And Dividend Plan As many now know, a large group of prominent economists, led by a large group of Nobel Prize winners, has published a petition in the Wall Street Journal.  This petition declares the idea of putting a tax on carbon and then returning the receipts from it to the population on an even per capita basis to be the best and most efficient plan for dealing with global warming.  This group continues...

[embedded content]Martin Luther King when asked about the Berlin Wall: This is my first vision of the Wall. “And do you find it depressing?” Yes, I certainly do. It symbolizes the divisions of mankind. “Have you ever seen anything as disastrous as this?” Not really. Suddenly there are the divisions that continue to exist but when these divisions are symbolized by an actual wall, it becomes very depressing. ...

This does not come as a surprise to anyone in Michigan. Mostly it is quiet here and people are still stunned about something of this magnitude could go on for years. There were numerous complaints by female student athletes of various college ages and under which span 20 years. Complaints made to the university, administrators, coaches, trainers, etc. quietly fell to the wayside with conciliatory answers. “he is an Olympic doctor and he should know what...

Weirdly Non-Monotonic Yield Curves This is a situation that may be on the verge of disappearing and more or less normalizing, but over the last couple of months US bond markets have exhibited a weird phenomenon of non-monotonicity. It has been even weirder than what we saw during the period of negative nominal interest rates, when what we saw was interest rates on US treasury securities fell from the shortest time horizon to a low usually around the...

McDonalds Anyone, Trump Buys for Lunch? Dems Refuse over Bad Offer on the Table. Giving this guy some coverage is questionable; but he is an idiot along the lines of his boss who also says the dumbest things. KEVIN HASSETT, Trump economic adviser: “You know as soon as it’s resolved, then people get their paychecks, and the government will go back to acting normal, and the economy will go back to the 3 percent growth that President Trump’s policies have...