The Angry Bear

I have tried to resist Fisking this op-ed by Ross Douthat, but I can’t resist. Whole post after the jump to avoid lowering AngryBear relevance index. “The Necessity of Stephen Miller” (title chosen by an editor not Douthat) He writes negotiations “have mostly taken place between people who are fundamentally in agreement on immigration,” who favor both amnesty for illegal immigrants and reforms that would probably increase immigration rates. The problem...

by Mike Kimel “Naskh” I think it was sometime in the late 90s when I first heard someone say that Reagan could never be elected to anything at the time as a Republican. This was because the Republican Party had tacked so far to the right in a decade that many who worshipped Reagan would have found his actual policies to be hopelessly leftist. I doubt Mr. Reagan would have a place in his own Party today either. I believe a similar effect exists for the...

Nancy Altman reminds us that Social Security is NOT off the table for Republicans via this post Republicans Are Killing Social Security One Tiny Service Cut at a Time at Slate: Republicans have made no secret of their long-standing desire to destroy Social Security as we know it. Indeed, Sen. Marco Rubio revealed just before Christmas that congressional Republicans plan to go after Social Security yet again. Their strategy includes both direct and...

Trade was a significant factor in the weak GDP report today and as usual when this happens you see many comments that do not understand why imports are a negative in calculating GDP. We do not directly calculate GDP.  Rather, we calculate consumption and adjust that for trade and inventories to obtain GDP indirectly.  To go from consumption to production in the US we have to subtract imports because they were not produced in the US.  However, imports show...

Parsing the Poland Problem Paradox: Local Versus National Outcomes As argued in numerous posts here, we have seen an apparently emerging disconnect between economic conditions and political outcomes in a variety of nations, with anti-immigrant or more generally nationalist or populist parties with authoritarian tendencies gaining strength in many nations despite apparently improving or even largely pretty good economic conditions.  A list of those...

A note on December existing home sales First of all, sorry for the light posting this week.  There’s not much news until tomorrow and Friday, and yesterday was a travel day.  So….. While existing home sales are about 90% of the entire housing market, they are the least important economically, because of their much more limited impact since they do not involve any new construction. That being said, December’s existing home sales, at 5.57 million...

Is Trump’s Washing Machine Tariff To Punish South Korea For Being Too Friendly With North Korea? I have seen nobody claim this, and this may simply be a matter of collateral damage, as Trump has officially approved of the recent openings related to the forthcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea, especially since South Korean President Moon went out of his way to give credit to Trump publicly for this opening, credit Trump publicly accepted.  It is...

Recent increased interest rates probably won’t derail housing In the last couple of weeks, long term interest rates have moved significantly higher.  As of yesterday, the 10 year bond closed at roughly 2.66%, its highest yield in 3 1/2 years.  If this move is sustained for a few months, I expect it to have an effect on the housing market, but how much? Here is an updated variation on a graph I have run many times over the last 5 years:  the YoY change...

McConnell is a weasel. He has sold out his own by making promises and then reneging on them like he did with Collins. He makes promises to Democrats and then reverses his stance laying the blame on them. Over at Washington Monthly, the writers think Schumer needs to up his game. Lets ask the question of whether the Democrats really caused the military not to be paid and shut down the government. Click on the link or view the Youtube. With three “I...