Thinking about the coronavirus is bleak, so let’s do some political philosophy to cheer ourselves up. Libertarian philosopher Jason Brennan has a new post up claiming that our obligations to help strangers are much weaker than we might think they are, and may not exist at all, because most people are “morally very bad”. Brennan […]
“High Contagiousness and Rapid Spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2,” CDC, Emerging Infectious Diseases Doing my usual morning reading, I ran across a comment concerning an early release article by the CDC which as the CDC points out is not considered to be a final versions. I believe what is important about the […]
Alan Collinge of the Student Loan Justice Org. has a petition promoting the cancellation of Student Loan Debt. When Angry Bear ran (April 1) his commentary on Student Loan Debt asking for signatures, there were 161,000 signatures on the petition. A couple of days later, the number of signatures was approaching 200,000 Today, I was […]
A last look at the 2009 – 2020 expansion by New Deal democrat All of the most important economic from February has been reported. Since that was the last month before coronavirus derailed everything, I thought I would take a look back and see what shape the economy was in just before the moment of […]
Weekly Indicators for March 23 – 27 at Seeking Alpha by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. As you might expect, almost all of the “hard” indicators have crashed. What sticks out is that consumer spending, as measured by chain store sales, has not – even though one week […]
The Covid-19 epidemic is creating a painful dilemma for policymakers. On the one hand, we need to practice social distancing to keep people healthy and to prevent our hospitals from being overwhelmed. Unfortunately, this strategy is causing a severe economic contraction as people avoid contact with others. An ideal response to this dilemma would have […]
The USA is about to experience the largest fiscal policy shift since World War II. The House is debating whether to add $ 2,200,000,000,000 to the Federal Budget Deficit (counting loans as if they were expenses because that’s what they do). There appears to be a near consensus as all are speaking in favor. It […]
Not surprisingly, many business owners are upset to discover that their business interruption policies do not cover losses due to pandemics. Although it is easy enough to understand their frustration, it is important to understand the underlying economics. (Full disclosure, I worked in the property casualty industry for many years.) The main business of insurance […]
The Senate economic rescue package contains $500 billion for bailouts of large corporations. Much commentary has focused on the lack of accountability, but the bigger issue is simply the massive waste of taxpayer dollars. From the WAPO: In a Tuesday interview on Fox, Boeing chief executive Dave Calhoun said he would not be willing to […]
The recent insider trading by members of Congress (notably but not exclusively by Senator Burr) is appalling. One policy response – advocated for by Elizabeth Warren – would prohibit MOCs from investing in the stock of individual companies, requiring them instead to invest in mutual funds. This would prevent the type of corruption evident in […]