The Angry Bear

The Minsky Moment Ten Years After These days are the tenth anniversary of the biggest Minsky Moment since the Great Depression.  While when it happened most commentators mentioned Minsky and many even called it a “Minsky Moment,” most of the commentary now does not use that term and much does not even mention Minsky, much less Charles Kindleberger or Keynes.  Rather much of the discussion has focused now on the failure of Lehman Brothers on September...

Trump Wants to Lower Drug Prices I just now got around to reading some May 11 speech by Donald Trump who says he wants to reign in the high price of drugs. A laudable goal and Trump said some things that got applause. But ahem – he may no clue especially when he says things like this: We’re very much eliminating the middlemen. The middlemen became very, very rich. Right? (Applause.) Whoever those middlemen were — and a lot of people never even figured...

Weekly Indicators for September 10 -14 at Seeking Alpha – by New Deal democratMy Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. An anomalous surge in demand deposits led to one of the 5 biggest weekly jumps in M1 money supply ever as reported by the Federal Reserve this week. By clicking on the link and reading, you help reward me for my work by putting a penny or two in my pocket.

Paul Krugman put many of his thoughts together here “What Do We Actually Know About the Economy? (Wonkish)” Basically he concludes that some economists are confused but Paul Krugman knows a lot (no one has ever accused him of being diplomatic). Of course I agree with him. However, I am very pleased to note that I finally find one or two points of disagreement. I’d just click the link but to try to summarize “Macroeconomics is better than you think,...

Sunday Morning “New Yorker” WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Millions of Americans do not want Donald J. Trump to text them that there is an emergency, but “very strongly” want Robert Mueller to text them when this current emergency is over, a new poll shows. FEMA’s about-to-be-launched “Presidential alert” system drew a sharply negative reaction in the poll, with a majority of Americans saying that they would burn, smash, or otherwise pulverize their...

Mainstream Economics become the celebration of the wealthy rentier class To paraphrase Mark Twain, everyone complains about inequality, but nobody does anything about it. What they do is to use “inequality” as a takeoff point to project their own views on how to make society more prosperous and at the same time more equal. These views largely depend on whether they view the One Percent as innovative, smart and creative, making wealth by helping the rest...

Go, Secretary Mnuchin! Save The Iranian Banks! In the Sept. 14 Washington Post, Josh Rogin is all shocked and upset about a report that people in the US Treasury Department, apparently supported by, if not outright led by, Secretary Steve Mnuchin, have been stonewalling or slow-moving a memo that was ordered up by President Trump in late July in order to implement the fully renewed financial sanctions against Iran, specifically to disallow Iranian banks...

The Taboo against raising wages is still thriving among small businesses The National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) put out its monthly confidence and hiring reports over the past few days. The confidence report soared to new high, so the economy is Teh Awesome and happy days are here again! Right? And look! It’s confirmed by the hiring report, which also shows record high plans to hire new workers: So how have those record hiring...

Via AOL is an interesting program: The Federal Emergency Management Agency is testing a new “presidential alert” system nationwide for the first time next week that will make it possible for Donald Trump to directly message nearly everyone in the nation who has a cell phone. Officials insisted that the system cannot be used for political purposes. FEMA also assured people that it can’t track cell phone users’ locations through the alert system. No one...