Tag Archives: politics

Forecasting the 2020 election: the economic baseline (or, don’t count on a recession) Four years ago, I decided to use my set of “long leading indicators” to forecast the 2016 election. The indicators were very weakly positive, and pointed to a narrow popular vote win for the incumbent party one year out. This prompted Nate Silver to huff and puff that nobody knew anything about what the economy would look like so far off. One year later, the economy was...

“The New Hospital Price Disclosure Rule Is Important, But Only A First Step,” Health Affairs, James C. Capretta, August 26, 2019 The new proposed regulation on hospital price transparency is an important step toward consumer-friendly price information. The regulation introduces into federal price transparency, requirements such as the concepts: of service standardization, consumer-friendly organization and terminology, and bundling of which all of are...

I learned a long time ago at much personal expense, that there is a personality type which function within reality, but only in the present moment of reality.  That is, what ever I say now has no bearing or relationship to what I just said or what I am about to say.  I will deny what you thought you heard.  If that is not enough, I will qualify it but…it has no bearing on what you believe I am saying.  You can just never know and ultimately have no...

Being that I have lots to say and have not had time to formulate it into posts I figured I would just start here.  2006.  Do watch it.  He tried to warn us.   But hey…Now the news media is being threatened too and they are concerned. [embedded content] I keep coming to these words: But don’t ask me what I think of you I might not give the answer that you want me to” Ooh, well One question for MSNBC who now puts on David Jolly regularly as the...

There is an interesting discussion among smart, expert, thorough economists about wealth taxation. It is clearly stimulated by Warren’s proposal to tax wealth. Gabriel Zucman, Roger Farmer, and the much less famous but also super smart Noah Smith are debating the issues. I’m sure AngryBear readers can benefit from their discussion (to which I don’t link cause I just saw one tweet). I am also sure that it will be a waste of time to click “more” and...

As you can read for yourself, this is the second part  of the series. This part will introduce the EU’s proposed solution to plastic waste material of which Sesotec is to be a part of the solution. Since I am using Sesotec’s information, I will be stating their name as owner’s of this information from time to time. Some 70 years after the first plastic products hit the market, a world without plastic waste still appears far off. We need a different...

I covered the House SECURE Act and the Senate RESA version last July. The House RESA Act is up for consideration in the Senate now. It does not look like it is going to make it due to the impeachment process going on and a potential trial in the Senate. There is also a small matter of a budget needing to be passed. It was to be considered under an unanimous consent vote; however, three Republican Senators (Mike Lee of Utah [unidentified reason], Ted Cruz...

Reuters: Italy will become the first nation to require all schoolchildren to study climate change and sustainable development. Education Minister Lorenzo Fioramonti of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement: “The entire ministry is being changed to make sustainability and climate the center of the education model. All state schools would dedicate 33 hours per year or almost one hour per school week to climate change issues from the start of the next...

by David Zetland (originally published at One handed economist) Big data helps monopolies, not you Economists say competition in markets rages from “perfect” (no company can charge a price over cost without losing 100% of its customers to another company) to “monopoly” (one company sets prices to maximize profits). Two caveats are important. First, the monopolist doesn’t charge as much as possible but whatever maximizes profits. There might be a lot of...

It is 2.30 am, and I can't sleep. Today I must file my final piece for American Express's FXIP blog, which is being mothballed. Writing for that blog has been my main source of income for the last four years. Once it is gone, my income will once again become precarious and inadequate, as it has been all too often in the past. Hence my sleeplessness.To be perfectly honest, I'm not sorry that the blog is closing. I've done some interesting work for it, and learned a lot. And it has been a...