Tag Archives: US EConomics

Jason Brennan has a new post up doubling down on his earlier criticism of epidemiologists and government policy in response to the COVID crisis.  I responded to his earlier blog posts here.  I am still not convinced, but there are useful lessons to be learned from going through his argument. Brennan continues to claim that epidemiologists produced bad statistical analysis, and that we should not take their advice seriously (all bolding is mine): I’ve been...

I have had this re-posted today because I believe it is as relevant today as when I wrote it in May, 2009.  My hope is that this event we are living moves enough new people to realize the society we built is not sustainable.  My hope is that one of the basic questions I was trying to answer in a more completely when I started blogging at AB is answered in a manor such that the nation and ultimately humanity becomes more inclusive: Why do we have an...

Thinking about the coronavirus is bleak, so let’s do some political philosophy to cheer ourselves up. Libertarian philosopher Jason Brennan has a new post up claiming that our obligations to help strangers are much weaker than we might think they are, and may not exist at all, because most people are “morally very bad”. Brennan begins with this question: To what degree are our moral obligations to provide help and assistance to strangers reduced because...

“High Contagiousness and Rapid Spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2,” CDC, Emerging Infectious Diseases Doing my usual morning reading, I ran across a comment concerning an early release article by the CDC which as the CDC points out is not considered to be a final versions. I believe what is important about the preliminary information is the increase of R-naught from 2.3 to 5.7. By now I believe you know what R-naught means; but, I...

Alan Collinge of the Student Loan Justice Org. has a petition promoting the cancellation of Student Loan Debt. When Angry Bear ran (April 1) his commentary on Student Loan Debt asking for signatures, there were 161,000 signatures on the petition. A couple of days later, the number of signatures was approaching 200,000 Today, I was advised, they now have 211,000 signatures. If the Fed will be supporting the asset-backed markets, the primary corporate bond...

A last look at the 2009 – 2020 expansion by New Deal democrat All of the most important economic from February has been reported. Since that was the last month before coronavirus derailed everything, I thought I would take a look back and see what shape the economy was in just before the moment of impact. As usual, the 4 coincident indicators that the NBER usually looks for in determining whether the economy is in expansion or contraction are: industrial...

Weekly Indicators for March 23 – 27 at Seeking Alpha by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. As you might expect, almost all of the “hard” indicators have crashed. What sticks out is that consumer spending, as measured by chain store sales, has not – even though one week ago the coronavirus restrictions were very much in place in many regions. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you thoroughly up to date. It also...

The Covid-19 epidemic is creating a painful dilemma for policymakers.  On the one hand, we need to practice social distancing to keep people healthy and to prevent our hospitals from being overwhelmed.  Unfortunately, this strategy is causing a severe economic contraction as people avoid contact with others. An ideal response to this dilemma would have three basic components.  First, we would implement a hard, nation-wide lockdown to slow the spread of...

The USA is about to experience the largest fiscal policy shift since World War II. The House is debating whether to add $ 2,200,000,000,000 to the Federal Budget Deficit (counting loans as if they were expenses because that’s what they do). There appears to be a near consensus as all are speaking in favor. It is just possible to guess which are Republicans I’m sure there is a similar near consensus that Rep Thomas Masie of Kentucky, who made them fly to...

We do not know how severe the covid-19 epidemic will be or how much economic and social pain it will cause, but it clearly has the potential to kill hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans, and the economic consequences could include a deep recession and even a financial crisis that will cause misery to tens of millions of people. Testing is key to getting the epidemic under control, and it is not clear to me that policymakers are being nearly...