The Angry Bear

Worse Than The Usual Hypocrisy: Trump, Puerto Rico, And The Jones Act The Jones Act was passed 97 years ago to protect US shipping within the US from foreign-made ships.  I doubt I ever would have supported such an act, but at least back then there were plenty of US-made ships to fulfill the demand. Despite the Jones Act, the US shipping industry has collapsed in the last century so that the number of such ships is far below demand in normal...

Being a parent of a child under 16 means trying to figure out ways to get said child from here to there, say from school to home, and from home to after school activities, and then back. There is often a fair amount of juggling involved – one or more, er, “caregivers” are typically involved in the process To an economist, therefore, being able to put a child in a self-driving car means, potentially, more output in the economy. That’s a parent or...

Last 21 Days ACA Healthcare History On September 7th and shortly after Pelosi and Schumer decided to be nonpartisan and help Republicans who still had an ounce of decency to pass hurricane Harvey aid and set a new National Debt Limit, I wrote about the inherent dangers of being so magnanimous. Lets face it, during the Obama 8 years, Republicans made it a vow even before he took office to oppose everything coming from the other side of the aisle even...

Last 21 Days ACA Healthcare History On September 7th and shortly after Pelosi and Schumer decided to be nonpartisan and help Republicans who still had an ounce of decency to pass hurricane Harvey aid and set a new National Debt Limit, I wrote about the inherent dangers of being so magnanimous. Lets face it, during the Obama 8 years, Republicans made it a vow even before he took office to oppose everything coming from the other side of the aisle even...

A hurricane workaround for industrial production Last week I mentioned that the regional Fed surveys plus the Chicago PMI can be used as a workaround to account for the effects of hurricanes on Industrial Production. It isn’t pretty and by no means is it perfect, but for the (hopefully only) two or three months that we need it, we can use the workaround to give us the underlying trend in production, particularly for manufacturing.This is a two-step...

A hurricane workaround for industrial production Last week I mentioned that the regional Fed surveys plus the Chicago PMI can be used as a workaround to account for the effects of hurricanes on Industrial Production. It isn’t pretty and by no means is it perfect, but for the (hopefully only) two or three months that we need it, we can use the workaround to give us the underlying trend in production, particularly for manufacturing.This is a two-step...

by Peter Dorman (originally published at Econospeak) Gentrification This is the bane of urban development, right? Old housing stock, built for yesterday’s working class, is spiffed up and priced far out of reach of today’s regular folk. High end shops replace hardware stores, bric-a-brac recyclers and appliance repair centers; a tide of designer coffee flushes out the cheap, refillable kind. Who can afford to live there? But wait! Those refurbished old...

by Peter Dorman (originally published at Econospeak) Gentrification This is the bane of urban development, right? Old housing stock, built for yesterday’s working class, is spiffed up and priced far out of reach of today’s regular folk. High end shops replace hardware stores, bric-a-brac recyclers and appliance repair centers; a tide of designer coffee flushes out the cheap, refillable kind. Who can afford to live there? But wait! Those refurbished old...