The Angry Bear

Basil Moore dies I have just learned that prominent Post Keynesian economist, Basil Moore, died yesterday.  I do not know of what or how old he was, although he retired over a decade ago.  He is best known as the author of Horizontalists and Vericalists, in which he strongly argued for the endogeneity of money. In more recent years he had become interested in dynamic complexity economics. He long taught at Wesleyan in Connecticut.  In the final years of...

One third of the way to the 2020 Presidential election Today marks 16 months since the 2016 election, and 32 months before the one in 2020. We are one third of the way through.  Barring a major industrial or nuclear war, we are going to make it. The only major legislative accomplishment so far is the pro-cyclical, lopsided tax cut giveaway to corporations and the wealthy.  Additionally a bunch of lifetime judicial appointments have been made. On the...

by Joseph Joyce Not All Global Currencies Are The Same The dollar may be the world’s main global currency, but it does not serve in that capacity alone. The euro has served as an alternative since its introduction in 1999, when it took the place of the Deutschemark and the other European currencies that had also been used for that purpose. Will the renminbi become the next viable alternative? A new volume, How Global Currencies Work: Past, Present and...

As taken from the comments section. EMichael’s commentary on temperature and its impact. Interesting. “Air conditioning has changed demographics, too. It’s hard to imagine the rise of cities like Dubai or Singapore without it. As residential units spread rapidly across America in the second half of the 20th century, the population in the “sun belt” – the warmer south of the country, from Florida to California – boomed from 28% of Americans to 40%. As...

Cochrane Fails to Make His Case for the Trump Tax Cut Again John Cochrane recently noted: Stock Buybacks Are Proof of Tax Reform’s Success… A short oped for the Wall Street Journal here on stock buybacks. As usual, they ask me not to post the whole thing for 30 days though you can find it ungated if you search. I did search and found this. Does the Wall Street Journal get the fact that rebutting weak arguments against a policy are not exactly making an...

Hi folks…I am in a next town over at a friends and am online again.   Am also thinking getting a generator due to changes in climate….:)

Dan is without power due to the Northeasterner coming up the coast. He is hoping to have power restored today since it went out on Wednesday. I am assuming he still has water. When we lose power, we lose everything besides electricity. Our well stops also and we resort to bottled water and large containers for sanitation use. While there is no heat, we do have a wood burning fireplace. Probably going to by a generator one of these days. Above 12 years...

There are no loud guns shots in the middle of the night. No screams for help or sounds of cars speeding away. No police sirens or flashing lights. It is pretty quiet when someone ODs on Opioids unless someone finds them before it is too late. As I wrote earlier; “From 2006 to 2015, pharmaceutical companies spent $880 million in lobbying state and federal legislatures and contributing to campaigns to prevent laws restricting Opioid prescriptions. Opioid...

(Dan here…Better late than never!) A thought for Sunday: the march of demographics and the 2018 midterms Below is a graph showing that the older the demographic (up until age 80), the bigger the turnout during midterm elections. The data behind this graph isn’t just from 2014, but from a series of midterm elections over time — in other words, it has been durable over time. My purpose in this post is show that, even if these percentages hold in this...