The Angry Bear

Consider a country with a vicious ongoing multi-sided Civil War which includes some amount of deliberate large scale civilian extermination.  You know the sort of thing: Syria today is just the most recent example, but there are other well-known examples from the last few decades.  To keep things generic, let us refer to the various sides in the Civil War as A, B, C, etc. Militias from each group have been caught massacring civilians from the other group.  Or...

A partial of the Republican plan: introduced by Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), would end Medicaid expansion, decouple health insurance from employers, offer a tax credit of up to $5,000 to fund HSAs, and eliminate most regulations on what health plans must cover. Insurers would be able to sell policies across state lines; regulations that mandate birth-control coverage would be nixed. Hmmmm, that’s nice . . . This is about the...

by New Deal democrat Bad news: real nonsupervisory wages have actually DECLINED over the last year This morning’s inflation news was even worse than I expected based on the increase in gas prices. On a monthly basis prices rose +0.6%. Core prices rose +0.3%. More importantly, YoY CPI was up +2.5%.  Core YoY CPI was up+2.3%: This means real nonsupervisory wages are now actually *down* -0.1% YoY for the last year. Here is the actual level of real...

Scott Alexander at Slate Star Codex has a very good post on cost disease. It definitely betrays a strong libertarian or conservative bias, but is nevertheless, worth reading. The piece that resonates with me is posted below. It has some good insights, one or two that are questionable (for anyone not firmly ensconced on the right), but overall it methodically works its way to one hell of a punch-in-the-gut truth in last sentence. Imagine if tomorrow, the price...

by Barkley Rosser  (originally published at Econospeak) Trump And The Fed It may be way too soon to say anything sensible about what Trump thinks about the Fed or will do  about it, but as the first person to have publicly called for appointing Janet Yellen as Chair (back in 2009), I figure I am more situated to stick my neck out to say something, especially when it looks like what is coming is a big contradictory mess.For the moment the Fed seems to be...

by New Deal democrat A thought for Sunday: No, Trump isn’t imploding — but the opposition is broad and intense My post from two weeks ago, “No, Trump isn’t Imploding” got picked up by a few other sites within the past few days, and I wanted to follow up because we have a fuller picture of public opinion now. Basically, Trump still isn’t imploding. He is holding his base. In fact, there is a little economic evidence that they are putting their wallets where...

We’ve gotten to another point where it’s hard for me to turn on the TV. I know this will have to change, but for now I’ll go back to one of my favorite topics, the fate of Ireland under austerity. As I suggested might happen, Ireland in its 2015-2016 immigration statistical year (May-April) was finally able to end its net emigration. According to the Central Statistical Office’s August report, 3100 more people came to Ireland than left during 2015-2016. This...

by Barkley Rosser                (originally published at Econospeak) The Scale Of Trump’s Yemen Botch It is  becoming clear that the scale of the botch by Donald Trump in Yemen in his first effort at a foreign military action is much greater than .first reported, as reported by Juan Cole.   Right from the start we heard that people in the military were complaining about poor vetting of intel and how there was more military resistance than expected, with one...