The Angry Bear

Carlo Cottarelli was asked to try to form an Italian government by President Sergio Mattarella. There is no chance that Cottarelli will obtain the confidence of Parliament (parties including a majority of deputies have brought up the possibility of impeaching Mattarella for nominating Cottarelli). Mattarella is using his extraordinary powers to fight populist nationalists who disrespected the Euro. Cottarelli is an odd choice for an anti-anti-globalist —...

(literally the surrender of Conte but a reference to The Big Gundown). updated to comply with the Italian criminal code (which forbids vilifying the President of the Republic) I have to write about Italian politics, because everyone is (and I live in Rome) but you don’t have to read it. I will try one paragraph of background. In the last election angry Italians gave a very thin majority to two extremist parties the movimento 5 stell and La Lega Nord is...

I wrote about how high house prices are correlaed with poor growth (partly because that which has gone up goes down). The data set was heroically collected by Jorda, Schularick, and Taylor who also used it for a paper which is actually very worth publishing (and published here). They find that high housing prices and rapid growth of total credit are correlated with greater severity and duration of the next recession.. I wonder if the bubble and credit...

Memorial Day 2018 For all those, of whatever race, creed, color, or nationality, who gave their lives so that government of the People, by the People, and for the People shall not perish from the Earth: < Gettysburg National Cemetery Antietam National Cemetery Arlington National Cemetery May they rest in peace.

Regulation: A Gut Check How do we get the word out that our underlying conception of how regulations should be designed and enforced needs to change? The New York Times has an ominous article about the overuse of antibiotics by the livestock industry and its risks for animal health and ours.  Flooding our digestive system with these drugs damages the gut microbiome we depend on for nutrition and waste processing, and it promotes the evolution of...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]Charles Gaba reviews the three leg stool necessary to support Healthcare and why each of those legs are necessaryfor healthcare to be important today. Charles reviews Enrollee Responsibility, Career Responsibility, and Government Responsibly (the three legs) necessary to support Healthcare in the US, explains how each Republican bill has or would have impacted the ACA, […]

$3 a gallon gas has returned! According to GasBuddy, as of this morning the average price of gas in the US is $3 a gallon: This is the highest in 3 1/2 years.  YoY gas prices are up a little over 25%. I suspect that this is a significant psychological threshold. While it’s not a “shock,” which historically has caused Americans to cut back their spending by double the increased amount that they spend on gas, causing a recession, it might very well...

Gorz: “The Right to an Income and the Right to Work,” part one From “Orientations and Proposals — The Reduction of Working Time: Issues and Policies” of Andre Gorz’s Critique of Economic Reason (1989) translated by Gillian Handyside and Chris Turner. I am posting the section on “The Right to an Income and the Right to Work” in two parts. This is part one: The Right to an Income and The Right to Work When the production process demands less work and...

Iran Responds to Plan B Juan Cole reports that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khameini has responded to Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and Pompeo’s Plan B 12 demands with 6 demands for Europe: 1) condemn the US withdrawal, 2) stop pressing Iran on missile development, 3) criticize any further US boycotts, 4) undo damage to Iran economy of boycotts especially to buy any oil not able to be exported because of them, 5) support financing of Iran...