The Angry Bear

(Dan here…Lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) by Robert Waldmann Kung Fu Monkey Nobel Prize I just learned that Quinnipiak U polled asking people whether Donald Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for his Singapore summit. I honestly thought that this was a great opportunity for Kung Fu Monkey to score again. Kung Fu Monkey is a blog where a dialogue was posted in which one of the bloggers confidently asserts that 27% of US adults are insane reactionaries....

(Dan here…late posting) by New Deal democrat On July 4, a consideration of Dred Scot On a 4th of July on which the President has expressed open longing for a lifetime term, and murmurings that a significant share of enlisted men in the military would be willing to overturn the Constitutional order should he call on them to do so, I’m not too interested in empty sloganeering celebrations. With the obvious exception of African slaves, the Constitution was...

Pruitt’s EPA Trashing Benefit-Cost Analysis Of Environmental Policy Scott Pruitt increasingly looks the worst of the worst out of the appalling cabinet of President Trump, quite aside from his race to become the single most corrupt cabinet member in the entire history ofthe US.  The latter is trivial compared to his policy change after policy change that will increase pollution in the environment and end up killing people, to be blunt about it.  But now...

David Gelles interviewed Richard and Holly Branson for The New York Times Saturday David Gelles (NYT): What do you think those in positions of power should do to address social problems like income inequality? Richard Branson: A basic income should be introduced in Europe and in America. It’s great to see countries like Finland experimenting with it in certain cities. It’s a disgrace to see people sleeping on the streets with this material wealth all...

Shock EU Court Decision Strikes Blow Against Investment Arbitration With all the dreary news we’ve seen this week, could you stand some good news? The battle against investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) got a huge boost in March when the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled in Slovak Republic v. Achmea B.V. (“Achmea”) that ISDS is contrary to EU law. The decision was something of a surprise because the preliminary analysis (“opinion,”...

Great new Tax Justice Network podcast on how “Bean Counters…Broke Capitalism” The June 28 Taxcast is out with a focus on the Big Four accounting firms. Richard Brooks is the author of Bean Counters: The triumph of the accountants and how they broke capitalism (order here in the UK and here in the US) which documents accountants’ involvement in some of the world’s worst financial scandals, not least of which is the promotion of tax havens. The new...

by Joseph Joyce The New Trade Wars The U.S. and China are headed down a road of retaliatory trade restrictions. Stock prices are falling in response to the impact of such measures on corporate profits, while U.S. firms reconsider their global supply chains. But one curious aspect of the situation is why it has taken this long to flare up. The “global imbalances” of the early 2000s were the Chinese trade surpluses and the U.S. deficits. These received...

May personal spending returns to typical late cycle pattern The consumer continues to do okay. That is the message from personal income and spending as reported for May this morning. First of all, let’s compare the YoY% growth in real personal spending (blue) with real retail sales (red): For the last 50 years, during all business cycles but one, retail sales rose faster than, and ran ahead of, spending during the first part of the cycle, and...

Excerpts from “The Effect of an Eight Hours’ Day on Wages and the Unemployed” by  Charles Beardsley, Jr. (The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Jul., 1895), pp. 450-459): The argument of workingmen that the general adoption of an eight hours’ day would raise wages and absorb the unemployed is well known. A reduction in hours of work would be equivalent to the withdrawal from the ranks of men now employed of a certain number of laborers. The...