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

Angry Bear has a new look and RSS feed has been restored

If you have been missing updates from Angry Bear, we apologize for the inconvenience. In the process of recently re-designing the look of the blog, the feed was inadvertently disabled due to a minor flaw in the html. An updated description about how Angry Bear has developed can be found through the link ‘About Angry […]

Top 100 Economic Blogs includes Angry Bear

Currency Trading has included Angry Bear as one of the top 100 economic blogs overall, characterized as a left leaning economics category. (Hat tip to DolB for the link) Calculated Risk , a guest poster at Angry Bear, was placed in financial section category.Tim Worstall , who comes by to comment, is listed under international […]

How do we define ‘fiscal responsibility’ left and right?

OMB Watch suggests looking at projections first for talk on fiscal responsibility. Hence instead of talking idealogy first, go for the numbers. It is not BDS to use this years budget, in that the projections have been manipulated for decades. We are just better at manipulation after decades of experience, and the supplementals simply throw […]

Citizen’s Guide to economic knowledge

A Citizen’s Guide to the financial status of the US government is a new publication to provide easier access for citizens to obtain data and understanding of what is going on. I believe this is the first edition. It is coordinated between Treasury, OMB, and the Comptroller General. It is pdf. It reads like the […]

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has a name that does not fall glibly off the tongue. Nor does the OCC figure prominently in current discussions on credit regulations. Can readers comment on the role it played in making sure federal standards applied to banks rather than state regulations, and what the issues […]

Eyes on Trade

Eyes on Trade of Public Citizen Watch has an opinion piece worth reading on the WTO and trade agreements, with some useful links. It’s our unfortunate duty here at EOT to have to read some truly mind-numbing trade law analyses of domestic regulation. For instance, have you ever really thought about whether electricity is a […]

Changeover by fiat

Calculated Risk has graciously lent his template for our use, which I think is a winner. There is no good time to change the old template to new template. There is also no way to save the old comments as notified by haloscan and blogger. The old Angry Bear html is also much too different […]

Social Security steamrolls carnival

On January 10 Moody’s, in concert with the other main bond rating firm, Standard and Poor’s, gave the United States its top AAA credit rating. The terrorist blackmail threat came in the form of a demand by Moody’s that the U.S. government “reform” Social Security and Medicare: “In the very long term, the rating could […]

Another budget constraint

Shadowstats has announced this tidbit. The Department of Commerce (DOC) has decided to discontinue its economic indicators service Economic indicators due to ‘budgetary constraints’. Shadow Government Statistics is pleased to announce that it will provide — at no charge tothe public — a continuation of the basic link service heretofore provided by the DOC’s Economics […]

Reader Denis offers this post on poverty

38% of American families living below a more accurately drawn poverty line? 50 percentile (technically, mean third-quintile) family income for 2005 was $56,277. A plausible poverty line for a family of three (on the “minimum needs” table on p.44 of the 2001 book Raise the Floor) is $33,345 in 2008 dollars — if health care […]