The Angry Bear

The Present If you thought it was over, it is not. Now that Schumer/Pelosi have removed the debt limit issue in front of Republicans with a Trump agreement, one more impediment to assaulting healthcare has been cleared away. John, I have cancer and have healthcare, McCain has come out to support a bill proposed by Senators Lindsay Graham and Bill Cassidy to repeal Obamacare. Maybe Trump knew and maybe he did not know; but, he did a nice pivot with...

by Joseph Joyce Trump and International Finance International trade and immigration were flashpoints of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and in his first year he has shown that he intends to fulfill his promises to slow down the movements of goods and people. Last month negotiations over NAFTA began with Canada and Mexico, with the U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer announcing that current bilateral deficits “can’t continue.” The President...

Noah Smith has written a column at BloombergView, “Don’t Believe What Jeff Sessions Said About Jobs,” which scolds Attorney General Jeff Sessions for “terrible economics.” That may be a bit like carping about Charles Manson’s hairstyle or critiquing David Duke’s academic integrity. But there is something far more dangerous going on with Smith’s knee-jerk invocation of the lump-of-labor fallacy to rebuke Sessions and, presumably, those who might find...

(Dan here…lifted from Bonddadd blog; better a little late than miss it) by New Deal democrat The single most important fact this Labor Day On Labor Day, highlighting the single most important secular problem in the US economy: If there is a silver lining, it is that the hemorrhaging has stopped since the end of the last recession. But we are long past the point where we need another corporate tax cut. We desperately need to increase Labor’s share of our...

Why Are We Not Keeping Track Of The Dead From Hurricane Harvey? It is not surprising that as Hurricane Harvey has finally moved off the Atlantic coast and is over, and the flood waters recede in the various places that it caused damage, it is unsurprising that reporting has moved onto the inside pages of papers and even seems on the verge of disappearing.  But somehow a piece of information that I would think is important, and that I have seen reported...

Now may be a good time to remind people that there can be bad arguments for good causes. There may even be good arguments for bad causes. Sessions is wrong: The effect of this unilateral executive amnesty, among other things, contributed to a surge of unaccompanied minors on the southern border that yielded terrible humanitarian consequences. It also denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal...

Quite a few things going on requiring some type of commentary. Trump can certainly get people going in different directions away from him. It is important to recognize these issues without losing sight of what Trump has done in stealing an election. Just a few things I have noticed in the news. DACA “But today, that shadow has been cast over some of our best and brightest young people once again. To target these young people is wrong – because they have...

Jô Soares, a well known Comedian turned political commentator (think Al Franken but not in the Senate) in Brazil, used to do a recurring skit about a former general who woke up from a coma. The rib was, the general had gone into the coma while the country was still ruled by a military junta. Anyway, the general would see stories in the news about former political prisoners turned into leading politicians, or former military personnel on trial, etc., and...

The August jobs report smacked of late cycle deceleration As promised, here is my abbreviated and late take on this morning’s employment report. While the additions to temporary positions (a leading indicator for jobs overall), and construction, and manufacturing jobs were welcome, this report sure looked like late cycle deceleration. The YoY% growth in jobs – a very un-noisy metric – declined again slightly: The number of people not in the labor force...