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

Two worlds ready or not

Simon Johnson at Baseline Scenario notes that (bolding mine) On the fringes of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos this week, there was plenty of substantive discussion – including about the dangers posed by our “too big to fail”/”too big to save” banks, the consequences of widening inequality (reinforced by persistent unemployment in some […]

Atul Gawande Strikes Again

This outstanding article about preventive care for high cost patients is outside the New Yorker paywall. It is very much worth reading. Like Ezra Klein, I found one of the drier examples very informative The firm had already raised the employees’ insurance co-payments considerably [skip] employee health costs continued to rise—climbing almost ten per cent […]

Nyhan on Reagan

Read Brendan Nyhan. He is very convincing. The post is too good to excerpt but I was particularly struck by a figure the claim that he “transformed Americans’ attitude about government” is not well-supported. Consider UNC political scientist Jim Stimon’s measure of public mood (Excel spreadsheet [sic it is really just a *.gif]), which captures […]

A Few Graphs on Real GDP Growth Rates versus Taxes and the Size of Government

by Mike Kimel A Few Graphs on Real GDP Growth Rates versus Taxes and the Size of GovernmentCross posted at the Presimetrics blog. This post has a few simple graphs showing the relationship between the growth in real GDP and a few other variables: the top marginal tax rate, spending by the federal government as […]

Update on conditions in Ireland…another letter from Ireland

The first letter from Ireland is here Update on conditions in Ireland…a second letter from Ireland Ireland, Land of Thieves, Charlatans and Sodomites… Zeus-Boy We’re forced to do silly things out of desperation, things that other nations don’t have to resort to. For instance, we’ve the lowest corporate tax rate in Europe at 12.5%. Sarkozy […]

Egyptian CDS in line with Portuguese CDS

It occurred to me that some Angry Bear readers may be interested in a short analysis of the Egyptian bond market. Professionally, I’m a macroeconomic analyst and portfolio manager on a global fixed income team. Since we do trade emerging market debt, of which Egyptian debt is categorized, I’ll be happy to comment. The gist […]

Third Time, Someone Will Believe: Manage Risk or It Manages You

As the late Allison Snow-Jones noted, economics depends on working mathematics. Mathematics, in turn, depend on the conditions being described correctly. If I build a model in which two things are independent, they have to be independent for my model to work. Or, to quote a quoting: Many months ago, I quoted the brilliant Janet […]

Jonathan Chait hits Paul Ryan out of the Park*

It’s easy as ABC Hilariously, the result of Ryan’s Dave-like search through the budget — and the only example of a putative budget savings mentioned anywhere in the piece — is his claim to have discovered a savings in the student loan program. In fact, this example is exactly the opposite of what Ryan (and […]

Why do Dictators Draft People Into Their Armies ?

Last night and today I watched on Al Jazeera (streaming) what sure looks like a Egyptian revolution. At the moment Hosni Mubarak is still President, however, he is not in control. The apparent turning point occured when he sent the army to suppress demonstrations after the vastly outnumbered security police didn’t manage. This is a […]

Dylan Ratigan Town Hall Session on Jobs, Innovation

Hat tip Yves Smith for pointing us to this: 8 PM EST Watch Dylan Ratigan Town Hall Session on Jobs, Innovation Check in here at 8 PM to watch the Dylan Ratigan “Innovation in America” panel discussion as part of its Steel On Wheels Tour tonight at 8pm EST at the University of Denver. The […]