The Angry Bear

I first met Volcker when I was a junior international economist in Washington in the late 1960s. He was the Treasury Under Secretary for International Economics. I was going to a luncheon at the National Press Club for the Indian Finance Minister.  As I got on the elevator, Paul Volcker and John Kenneth Galbraith — among other things he was the US Ambassador to India under Kennedy –followed me on.   I am 6’2″ — or at least I was back then — but they were...

The endowment effect and the taxation of wealth As you may recall, I am reading the histories of a number of past Republics which have had various levels of success. Without getting too far ahead of myself, it appears that one constant is that, once plutocratic oligarchies are entrenched, they will refuse to yield power or money, even to the point of destroying democratic or republican institutions.  In other words, David Frum‘s observation that “If...

Liz Cheney Loves Traitors Dick Cheney lied a lot so I guess his daughter feels compelled to do the same: So I would just ask people to remember that they have failed despite the fact that they had a process that basically put everything tilted in their direction. The Democrats were able to act as judge and prosecutor. The Democrats were able to select every single witness. The Democrats were able to prevent, and did prevent, witnesses from answering...

How Long Will US Foreign Net Income Dark Matter Continue? The United States became a net foreign debtor in 1985. With current account deficits every year since then, net foreign indebtedness has steadily increased since and reached a reported total of -$10.56 trillion as of Sept. 30 this year, a substantial total. However, while many have long predicted that this mounting net foreign indebtedness would eventually lead to the US also having a net negative...

Live-blogging the Fifteenth Amendment: December 7, 1868 In the Senate: “Mr. Craving asked, and by unanimous consent obtained, leave to introduce a joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States: . . . “No State shall deny the right of suffrage or abridge the same to any male citizens of the United States twenty-one years of age or upwards except for participation in rebellion or other crime and also excepting Indians...

December starts out with a thud The first reports in December are in, and both were negative. Let’s start with construction spending. Overall construction spending declined -0.8% in October. The more leading residential construction spending declined -0.9%, the second decline in a row (blue in the graph below): Figure1 Since actual spending on residential construction doesn’t take place until the house is started, it lags building permits (red in the...

It is not a dirty or hidden little secret. Insurance companies offering MA plans do not tell you that once you are in their plan, you are there potentially forever. Returning to traditional Medicare is ok but, getting a Medigap Plans to supplement the gap may lead to rejection or much higher premiums if you choose to come back and especially if their are pre-existing conditions. The same as the Commercial MA companies, Medicare.gov websites are not always...

The End Of The Harris Candidacy I should probably not waste time on this, but I was a fan of Kamala Harris. Her ending her candidacy while still in fifth  place in the polls and  if in a long slide, has me disappointed.  As it is, given her declining polls, lack of money, and reportedly internally divided campaign staff; her chances of actually getting the nomination had fallen to effectively zero.   It is actually an act of class on her part to get out...

Forecasting the 2020 election: the economic baseline (or, don’t count on a recession) Four years ago, I decided to use my set of “long leading indicators” to forecast the 2016 election. The indicators were very weakly positive, and pointed to a narrow popular vote win for the incumbent party one year out. This prompted Nate Silver to huff and puff that nobody knew anything about what the economy would look like so far off. One year later, the economy was...