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

Right to know bill out of committee

Healthy Rivers, my favorite blog for such matters, reports that: Congress just moved a little closer to establishing your right to know for sewage spills. Last Thursday, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee voted to pass the Sewage Right to Know bill (HR 2452) and send it to the full House for consideration. The bill […]

Social Security Zero: the Basics Revisited & Three Myths

Or perhaps we could call this ‘Social Security basics as seen by Bruce’. In any event. Some recent e-mail exchanges and comments have led me to conclude that there are certain misconceptions about Social Security finance, misconceptions that both feed on and feed into certain pernicious myths initiated by people who oppose Social Security on […]

Capital gains increase will change investor behavior? Nah.

Bloomberg has a poll that takes a look at rational investor behavior, with which I am very familiar, over the panic behavior laid out by our conservative ideologues over touching capital gain taxes of any percentage. If the monied sloshers are as sensitive as they imply, maybe they aren’t so rational, and are actually in […]

Greg Mankiw Gives Us Another Reason to Scream "Yours!"

I think he may believe it’s good news that the S&P 500 forward valuation (what we believe we might make next year, having nothing necessarily to do with current earnings or actual sales) has returned, approximately, to the level of 1998.* The problem, as I noted more than two years ago, is that, even ignoring […]

Oil prices: 1970s vs Current Situation

Just a quick chart to compare the current situation to the 1970s. When I ran the chart I did not expect such a nice match. The price series is West Texas intermediate.

Michelle Malkin Will Get the Vapors When She Sees This

As a direct result of the six-Republican, one Democrat California Supreme Court’s decision last week, people who have shared everything for 21 years now get to marry. Pull quote: As a Japanese American, I am keenly mindful of the subtle and not so subtle discrimination that the law can impose. During World War II, I […]

Index funds and commodities 2

Further lifting (of comments like cactus) by juan: “…the term ‘speculators’ tends to imply short-term traders while it’s my understanding that most of the index funds take longer term or more ‘sticky’ positions, but this can become a matter of semantics that detracts from what Briese and some others have tried to bring out — […]

Correlation is not Causation, but

J. C. Bradbury notes that early-season weather and home runs hit, while it is noted in comments that the decline is primarily in the American League and some suggestions on developing a model are made. (No, I’m not turning this into a baseball blog. There are purposes to these posts. All will be revealed.)

BW on Soc Sec X: the Danger of Low Cost

Well I am just going to lift the following from my little visited blog. In my defense a commenter back in April suggested publishing it on Angry Bear, at the time I didn’t have posting privileges.People who follow Social Security issues understand that in addition to the Intermediate Cost Alternative whose dates and numbers are […]