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

The Rabid two Minute Chait

Jon Chait has a great time with Paul Ryan and someone named McCay Coppins who asserted (without feeling any need to present evidence) that Chait is a “rabid” critique of Paul Ryan. Do click the link and read the whole post. You won’t regret it. (Don’t you hate the way the internet makes it possible […]

Scott Brown Comes Out for a New Hampshire State Healthcare-Insurance Public Option. In the Name of Freedom. Cool!**

[Annotation added below.] I’ve written here on AB, extensively now, about the invidious co-opting of the word “freedom” by the political far-right.  I’ve addressed this mainly in the context of the conservative Supreme Court justices’ neat trick of disconnecting the word from any relation to actual physical freedom as long as it is a state court […]

Is the Fisher Effect Stable or Unstable?

  Low inflation in an atmosphere of low nominal interest rates brings up the issue of the Fisher Effect. Here is the long run Fisher equation for a “steady-state” nominal interest rate… Inflation rate = steady-state nominal interest rate – natural real interest rate The steady-state means that the nominal interest rate is projected to […]

“Independent” Foreclosure Review Error Rate Vastly Higher

Yves Smith points to more OCC serving bank interests (not a surprise) in “Independent” Foreclosure Review Error Rate Vastly Higher Than Previously Admitted and well worth reading as usual: At this point, it seems hard to add insult to injury, given the terrible track record of the OCC Independent Foreclosure Reviews. But it’s nevertheless been […]

The Next Plague: Alzheimer’s

The Next Plague: Alzheimer’s In the 1970s and 1980s, a plague called AIDS swept through this country. Like a medieval scourge it was mysterious, incurable, and ruthless as it killed those who were far too young to die. Now, baby-boomers have reason to fear a new scourge: It won’t cut them down in their youth, […]

Kudos to Ross Douthat for his rebuttal to David Brooks on Piketty. Now, who will rebut Douthat about recent tax-policy history?

It turns out that Paul Krugman is not the only NYT columnist/blogger who reads Angry Bear. Ross Douthat does, too! Okay, seriously: Douthat’s delicate-ballet filleting of Brooks’s take on Piketty is priceless. Now, maybe someone can fillet Douthat’s take on tax-rate increases for “Americans making (or inheriting) in the $100,000-$500,000 range,” which, he says, “is […]

Gail Collins (and me): Free Us From ‘Freedom’

To be fair, I don’t think Hannity had any idea about Bundy’s racial theories. However, it’s generally a good idea to be wary of lionizing people who go around saying: “I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing.” Anyhow, Cliven was toast, although he did make an appearance on CNN, in which he […]

Expected Real Interest Rates & the Fisher Effect

The Fisher effect is defined by Paul Krugman & Robin Wells in their textbook… Economics, 3rd Editon 2013, page 721. “The expected real interest rate is unaffected by changes in expected future inflation. According to the Fisher effect, an increase in expected future inflation drives up the nominal interest rate, where each additional percentage point […]