Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

JzB Smackdown with Some Thoughts on Trends and Context

João Marcus Marinho Nunes is personally offended by my previous Angry Bear post.   Personally I was ‘offended’ by being ‘accused’ of “using short-time series data”, ignoring “what is a valid context” and “cherry picking”. Which was odd, since I didn’t accuse him of anything.  In fact, he wasn’t even on my radar screen.  He […]

More on Ineffective Fiscal Policy

This is a companion piece to Steve’s AB post from earlier today, where he points out the specious reasoning of  “the likes of Scott Sumner, David Beckworth, Lars Christensen, et al., claiming that fiscal austerity has obviously had no effect on GDP growth.” I wrote Sumner off a few years ago due to a highly […]

More Right Wing Lies – Now As In The Roaring 20’s

Amity Shlaes, the disinformation bunny, is still going.  In the latest issue of Imprimus, a publication of Hillsdale College, is a transcript adapted from a recent talk she gave there during a conference on the Income Tax, sponsored by Hillsdale’s own Center for Constructive Alternatives and the Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series.  Right away, you […]

You Can Fool Most of the People Most of the Time

At least on certain issues. I’m not inherently a great pessimist, but with few exceptions each passing month for over a decade now has seen my optimism whither, at least a little.  So I can’t help but see the manure-colored lining in this otherwise rosy, fluffy cloud. Steve Benen reports that according to the new […]

Thus Spake the Rube

For the hundredth time the foreign-born Muslim commie Nazi extends an olive branch across the aisle, and for the hundredth time it’s dashed to the floor, stomped on and set ablaze – along with the latest spokes-liars trousers.   It became a conflagration that the infamous water-stop could not staunch. Early in Marco Rubio’s alleged rebuttal […]

How To Debate Paul Krugman

On Saturday Mish wrote a really awful article with those words in it’s title. The article borrows these words and includes a quote from an even more awful article by Austrian school economist and author Detlev Schlichter.  Part of that quote is presented here. What makes him [PK] so annoying is his unquestioning, reflexive and […]