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

Housing: After the Boom

Is there a housing bubble? Yes. But what happens after the boom? This post will address the likely bust in the housing market and next week’s post will discuss the possible impact of the housing slowdown on the general economy. For those readers still uncertain about the housing bubble, here is an excellent article from […]

Does Everyone Gain From Free Trade?

Angrybear readers might have already picked up on the fact that I am generally a free trade advocate. One might then suspect I’d be praising the latest from Lawrence Kudlow. But then Lawrence has to write: But you can blame U.S. textile makers. These businesses have been protected for nearly 30 years but they still […]

“Economists” Enabling Tax Cheats: Why More IRS Resources Is Not Enough

Now that you have sent more than your fair share to the IRS, you might be wondering why the Federal deficit is so high. It turns out that when this clueless bear was praising Bob McIntyre and Max Sawicky, they were part of a conference addressing this issue. Max even provides pictures. Shorter Max: allocate […]

Health Care in The U.S. And The World, Part II: What do we spend the money on?

In Part I of this series, I showed that the US spends a lot more money on health care – now over 50% more as a percent of GDP than France and the other industrialized nations. Additionally, the U.S. is the only country in my data for which less than half of health care spending […]

MSNBCAB

Generally, I think covering blogs on cable news channels by literally panning the camera over a the blog while summarizing a post from that blog is a pretty lame idea.(*) Until now. Thanks to The Political Teen for the heads up and for putting the segment online. Angry Bear coverage starts at around the 1:30 […]

The Estate Tax and the Family Farm

I wish to thank Angrybear reader CL for pointing out this bogus argument for repealing the estate tax: Most obviously, a farm or other small business that’s operating at a small profit would, presumably, not be profitable if it maintained the same revenue stream and expenses plus having to essentially buy back half the business […]

“FactCheck” Flunks Financial Economics

Via Andrew Samwick comes the latest from FactDistort.org who attack Senator Reid’s Social Security Calculator with this: In fact, the calculator is rigged. We find it is based on a number of false assumptions and deceptive comparisons. For one thing, it assumes that stocks will yield average returns of only 3 percent per year above […]

Hiltonomics

Under Kash’s post on the repeal of the estate tax, reader Rupert posted a Wall Street Journal op-ed with the title Hiltonomics. Yes, the Wall Street Journal is defending shifting the tax burden away from deprived Paris Hilton onto the rest of us. Their thesis is that now that she does not have to worry […]

Waiting for Health Care

Okay, so much for the bad side of US health care: high costs and mediocre-to-poor average results. But what about the benefits that the “market-driven” US system provides? Sure, the argument goes, the US health care system has some shortcomings – but at least it doesn’t involve long waiting lists for elective procedures, as is […]

The House Votes to Increase Income Taxes

As has been well covered in blogland (for just two examples, see Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall) and traditional media, today the House voted to permanently repeal the estate tax. I have nothing substantive to add – my incredulity has long since been shattered by the Republicans’ apparently endless ability to reduce taxes on the […]