The Angry Bear

Flynn Bails, but Don’t Get Your Hopes Up I haven’t seen anything yet to convince me that the Putin-Trump collaboration was a big deal.  Ugly and unprincipled, sure, but politically consequential, probably not. A contrary view, expressed by Harry Litman in today’s New York Times, is that this is the beginning of the end for the Trumpster.  The evidence is accumulating that, between his election in November of last year and his inauguration on January 20...

It appears almost certain that the ACA (Obamacare) mandate will be eliminated. This actually means that Obamacare will correspond to Obama’s 2008 proposal which didn’t include a mandate. Obama claimed it would work (he was lying or, to be polite, playing 11 dimensional chess). Can ACA without a mandate work at all ? Can it be modiefied so that it works better ? People who know a hell of a lot more than I do about health economics have struggled with...

[embedded content] Douglas Holz-Eakin balanced with Kimberly A. Clausing in the NYT.   Link in the picture.  To think that looting could be so calmly described with ballance.

I will ease the pain from this early morning (when GOP senate slashed corporate taxes) by escaping into fantasy, I mean theory, but I repeat myself. A key theoretical argument about taxing profits (due to Diamond and Mirrlees I think) is that the tax can be very very high if firms maximize profits, because maximizing 0.5X is just the same problem as maximizing X. This is a tax on pure profits (profits minus capital times the cost of capital) . The...

Is Bitcoin A Speculative Bubble?  There are at least two definitions of a speculative bubble.  The first, and most widely accepted, is that it involves a price of an asset that rises substantially above its fundamental and then falls back towards that fundamental.  The other, not necessarily all that clearly distinguishable from the former, involves an asset price that rises due to people buying due to an expectation that they will get a capital gain from...

by Hale Stewart (originally published at Bonddad blog) Where’s Waldo, er, I Mean Inflation? Just a quick note: according to the 3, 6 and 12 month moving average of Y/Y percentage change in total and core PCE price indexes, there is little to no inflation to worry about.

(Dan here…reposted from an earlier analysis,) by Linda Beale Treasury Secretary Mnuchin’s Forked Tongue on Tax Cuts for the Wealthy Shortly before the inauguration, Steve Mnuchin discussed the incoming administration’s tax plans and announced the Mnuchin Rule–that “[a]ny reductions we have in upper-income taxes will be offset by less deductions so that there will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class.”   EXCLUSIVE: Steve Mnuchin says there will be...

Bruce Bartlett: “Prediction–EVERY Republican senator will whore himself or herself to pass this tax monstrosity. They should all go to Hell.” Bruce Bartlett: “Prediction–Democrats will stay home on Election Day 2018 because that’s what they always do best(last word is mine)” Predictions

AARP notes a planned reduction in Medicare funding.  I have not hear much from them as in times past. If you read through the umpteen pages of the Senate tax bill, you won’t find a clause that says it dramatically cuts Medicare spending. But the effect of the legislation being debated this week would be to slash up to $25 billion from the health program in 2018 and possibly more in the future. That’s because the tax measure would prompt the...