The Angry Bear

Robert Kocher and Donald M. Berwick “While Considering Medicare For All: Policies For Making Health Care In The United States Better,” Health Affairs Dr. Donald Berwick is the former Director of Medicare and Medicaid who talked about waste in Medicare and Doctors knowing such waste exists. “It is unlikely that the United States will move quickly to a full publicly financed health insurance when Congress next considers health policy after the 2020...

Tariffs and Monetary Policy: Moral Hazard and Rent Seeking President Trump’s threat to impose tariffs on Mexico over immigration has pushed Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell to say that if the tariffs lead to economic growth slowing, the Fed will cut interest rates.  While the bump may be about to end, this announcement was followed by a  solid global surge of stock markets on June 4 followed by smaller increases the next day.  This sets up a moral...

ISM manufacturing and residential construction spending trends continue May data has started out where April left off, with continuations of trends in both manufacturing and construction. First, manufacturing: it is still expanding, but at a much lower rate than last summer’s red hot numbers. The overall ISM manufacturing index declined a bit to 52.1, but the leading new orders sub-index rose slightly from 51.7 to 52.7: Looking forward to Friday’s...

From Brad. My bold To Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1 February 1938 Private and personal Dear Mr. President, You received me kindly when I visited you some three years ago that I make bold to send you some bird’s eye impressions which I have formed as to the business position in the United States. You will appreciate that I write from a distance, that I have not revisited the United States since you saw me, and that I have access to few more sources of...

The sources of the next recession While we are waiting for the ISM May manufacturing survey and construction spending data to be released later this morning, both of which will give us important clues to Friday’s jobs report, let me write down some thoughts on the nerdy question I ruminated about this weekend: what is the most likely source of the next recession? I should start by noting that I remain on “recession watch” for later this year, as in, a...

I’m getting my medical news from the front page of The Washington Post where Christopher Rowland discusses the possiblity that embrel, an anti arthritis drug, reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s dementia. The issue is clearly incredibly important. The article raises interesting ethical, economic, statistical, and biological questions. Better to click the link, but I will attempt a quick summary. There is evidence from anonymized insurance claims records...

by Joseph Joyce The Rise and Fall of FDI After the global financial crisis,  international capital flows contracted, especially bank lending in Europe. Foreign direct investment (FDI) by multinational firms, however, provided a steady source of external finance, particularly for emerging market economies. The McKinsey Global Institute has calculated that the global stock of FDI increased from 46% of world GDP in 2007 to 57% in 2016 ($25 trillion to $41...

A Tariff Laffer Curve? Douglas Irwin is a very good economist. Let’s highlight his Historical Perspectives on U.S. Trade Policy: The Civil War marked the beginning of a long period of high U.S. tariffs. These tariffs served the dual purpose of raising revenue for the federal government and keeping out foreign goods, ostensibly for the protection of U.S. labor and business. After the war, tariffs (which generated roughly half of government revenue)...

Kenneth Thomas (an AB contributor) was quoted April 7  in the Journal a second time on the general question of how to solve the problem of subsidy bidding wars.  Unfortunately it is behind a paywall…but worth pointing to…  WSJ.COM Opinion | Pass a Law to Combat Rent-Seeking Congress could invoke the Commerce Clause to limit destructive competition over corporate subsidies. ...