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

The Company You Keep

Ah something which I actually know something about. Dana Goldstein has found an amazing fact which, if middle class parents believed it was representative, would make the world (and in particular the USA) a much better place So were the litigious Fairfax parents correct to freak out about South Lakes? Let’s look at the numbers. […]

Politically impossible health care cost sharing

This is odd. Matthew Yglesias just excerpted a bit of a post at my personal blog, which I didn’t think was up to AngryBear standards. Far from it for me to question the judgment of a man who recently reached half my age. Here is the bit he liked One politically unfeasible approach to this […]

Smart Health Care Cost sharing

Ezra Klein writes about smart cost sharing. He wants a committee to decide reimbursement rates. This made me think about an idea I got from Mark Thoma Mark Thoma linked to the even more verbose version of this at my other blog. He has an interesting comment thread. …preventative care … ought to be encouraged, […]

Unobserved Country Heterogeneity: GDP Levels or Growth Rates

Have you ever noticed that, when considering the economic performance of different countries, people often just report the GDP growth rate without any corrections for e.g. initial GDP ? It’s as if they thought that countries generally have about the same growth rate and any deviation from the world average is interesting. This is very […]

Tax Policy Center calls McCain campaign out for cheating.

by Robert Brad DeLong has a hot tip from Jason Furman I quote a bit of Brad’s quote of Furman Today, the Tax Policy Center released a new analysis of the McCain and Obama tax plans, which provides a comparison between what each of the candidates says on taxes (their actual plans) and what their […]

ARMY navy air force MARINES

Budget Peace in our Times by Robert Waldmann How can it be that the US military is strained to the breaking point occupying (sorry assisting) two medium sized countries when we spend about half of total world military spending? I’m not sure this post is in the Angry Bear comfort zone, but one reason is […]

Bailouts and Moral Hazard

Bailouts and Moral Hazardby Robert Here we are again, just into a Bear (sterns) market and we have to face the fact that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are waaaaay to big to fail. A strong case can be made that a bailout will cost relatively little and failure to come to their assistance will […]

Milton Friedman Meets Robert Klitgaard

I encountered the writings of Robert Klitgaard twice. I read “Tropical Gangsters” an excellent book on his experience working for The World Bank in Ecuatorial Guinea which is not to be confused with the epymenus epyminus (oh hell I’ll never guess the spelling of that word ) CD by King Creole and the Coconuts. Years […]

Economics Makes for Strange Sick-Bed Fellows

Obama ready to cave in to insurance industry AKA ‘Her Way’; Obama Health Plan Could Go In Clinton’s DirectionTeddy Davis, John Santucci and Gregory Wallace ABC News 06.29.2008 Obama’s surrogate [Dr. Kavita Patel] made her comments Wednesday while representing him at a National Journal health-policy forum moderated by Ron Brownstein, the political director of Atlantic […]

Hello My Name is Robert Waldmann

Hi I am Robert Waldmann. rdan has very kindly invited me to guest post here some. I have a blog of my own (to which he kindly linked in the announcement). I am officially an economist, but tend to blog about politics at my home blog. Here I will try to fit the interest in, […]