The Angry Bear

by New Deal democrat A thought for Sunday: the economy is on autopilot. Pray that it stays that way It’s Sunday, so I get to step out from nerdy analysis, and opine as I please. Back in 2014, when there was another GOP “wave” election in the Congress, I wrote that the silver lining was that we were at the best point in the economic cycle for it to function on autopilot for the next 24 months. In other words, almost all of the long term indicators were...

I am generally very very impressed by Paul Waldman at the Plum line blog (for one thing I admire the lack of Ego he demonstrates by writing for a blog subtitled “Greg Sargent’s take from a liberal perspective). Waldman is reliably brilliant (so is Sargent). Now finally I find something he wrote with which I disagree. In the generally excellent “President Trump Appoints Tax Fairy to Key Economic Post” Waldman wrote ” The point isn’t that tax increases help...

by Kenneth Thomas Tax Justice Network Taxcast, March 2017: Brexit and Tax Havens; Losses to Tax Avoidance Will Brexit harm the City of London’s tax haven? With weak regulation, money laundering, and satellites like BVI, Cayman Islands, and Jersey, everyone knows it’s already a tax haven. The UK is threatening to be more of a tax haven if they don’t get their way on other issues in the Brexit negotiations, but the EU will be vigilant on this issue, in John...

Jeff Sessions said “I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power,” There has been considerable discussion of the phrase “and island in the Pacific”. With that phrase, Sessions made it clear that he considers Hawaii to be a second class state — not a real American state like Alabama. I have no doubt...

I recently saw a rather alarming poster advertizing a blood drive The title is “donate bllod and follow your artistic inclinations” which, given the image, I interpreted as “donate blood and faint, so that you are inclined head down just like the recently crucified Christ. You will be resurrected too (by some fluids not the holy spirit).” Oddly, it seems the advertizing agency didn’t notice the potentially alarming relationship between the image and a...

by New Deal democrat Real wages and spending: I don’t think consumers will roll over that easily This is the second part of a post about “hard data” and consumer spending. (Dan here…First part here) Yesterday I noted that self-reported consumer spending, as measured by Gallup, has been running 10% or better YoY since the beginning of February, consistent with Amazon.com’s earnings growth, but in contrast to a small slump in retail sales as reported for the...

by Kenneth Thomas How wrong is IBD on California? Let us count the ways Investor’s Business Daily has a hit piece out on California, as you can tell from the headline, “Taxifornia does it again.” Here’s the first paragraph of the editorial*, to give you a good flavor of it: California’s far-left government has done it again. Not realizing its real problems are excessive spending on misplaced priorities, excessive taxes, too much debt and a far-too generous...

by  Barkley Rosser Turkey And The Trend To Authoritarianism The big surprise in the Turkish referendum to make Turkey a presidential system was not that Erdogan’s side won, but that it was close enough that opponents are charging fraud based on ballots not being counted properly.  It may in fact be that it really did lose by a narrow margin, as some I know said it would.  But, officially it won by a bit more than Hillary beat Trump  and a bit less than Brexit...