Via Economist’s View, Paul Krugman notes a pattern in out post racial rhetoric: So what’s this all about? One reason…, Daniel Little suggested in a recent essay, is market ideology: If the market is always right, then people who end up poor must deserve to be poor. I’d add that some leading Republicans are, in […]

Bill McBride at Calculated Risk points us to some apparent better news State and local government austerity is over I think most of the recession related state and local government layoffs are over, and it appears state and local government employment has bottomed.  Of course Federal government layoffs are ongoing, but it appears state and local […]

Via Business Insider: While campaigning for President in 2008, candidate Barack Obama promised to not alter the way that cost of living adjustments were calculated for Social Security, a policy that is now a key feature of his 2014 White House budget. Addressing the AARP in September 2008, then-Senator Obama drew a major contrast between his […]

I really shouldn’t comment on Simon Wren_lewis’s defence of rational expectations until I have calmed down, but I can’t help muself. I will try to stick to FRED, that is data. Wren-Lewis argues that it is reasonable for macroeconomists to assume rational expectations since the practical alternatives are rational expectations or naive expectations. However most […]

What the —! Well it occured to me, and not for the first time, that a lot of people really don’t understand my Social Security project and particularly what even some of my friends and allies think is a narrow focus on the nuts, bolts and numbers of Social Security financial reporting. It seems to […]

by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt Health Care Thoughts: Which Law to Violate? Citing a state notice statute, the Insurance Commissioner of California has convinced Blue Shield NOT to cancel policies which are not grandfathered under the ACA. The policies will be extended until March 31, giving hundreds of thousands of policy holders more time to […]

Total Security on Planet Elsinore: a Social Security Thought Game (Part 1) – Set the gameboard and initial rules for Total Security or TS for short. To recap the USE a democratic republic polity on Planet Elsinore has a long established government retirement security program called Total Security paid for by an across the income […]

Several readers and contributors have reported problems getting to comments or leaving comments.  Please let me know via  angrybearblog at gmail.com  if you are.  Sorry for any inconvenience. Update Nov.9….  No answers from ad people or our own servers yet…sorry.  Dan

Paul Krugman mentions a “blockbuster” paper from the Fourteenth Jacques Polak Annual Research Conference. The paper is titled Aggregate Supply in the United States: Recent Developments and Implications for the Conduct of Monetary Policy. It was written by Dave Reifschneider, William L. Wascher and David Wilcox… all from the Federal Reserve Board. The paper states […]

Real GDP came out today. The number was $15,790 billion for the 3rd quarter 2013. Back in July, I posted an article that Real GDP had an appointment to keep with Effective Demand. I showed a series of graphs from the past of how real GDP grows up to the effective demand limit before a […]