From All In with Chris Hayes, MSNBC 2001-2003

Our own original Angry Bear speaking to the Middle East in 2004: Emperor Hadrian Webb’s claims in the first two paragraphs quoted in the previous post remind me of this quote, provided by commenter Megamike: “Beyond the Euphrates began for us the land of mirage and danger, the sands where one helplessly sank, and the […]

I see that the low productivity in the United Kingdom is still a mystery. (WSJ article by Paul Hannon). Since the beginning of 2013, productivity in the UK has been stalled. Last week I posted a model of effective demand that showed how productivity stalls at the effective demand limit. This model is new and […]

The petition is here.  Including a comment is optional. I opted to write one: Matt the dog warden threatened her and her neighbor with arrest if they took the dog to the vet? And the violation of law charged would have been what, exactly? So there are three issues here: First, the dog’s owner did break […]

Lead story at CNN was this: Washington (CNN) — An internal Veterans Affairs audit released Monday said tens of thousands of newly returning veterans wait at least 90 days for medical care, while even more who signed up in the VA system over the past 10 years never got an immediate appointment they requested. I […]

‘Food desert’ is not a common idea on people’s minds, but we also tend to say “Let them eat cake” when it comes to obesity. Michael Pollan suggests: Stay out of the middle of the supermarket; shop on the perimeter of the store.  It is not just what you eat but how you eat.  “Always […]

No sooner do I comment on the difference between tax planning and tax avoidance than Richard Murphy points out that several multinational corporations are having their tax deals looked at for potential violations of the European Union’s state aid rules. As The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal report, there are three cases currently under […]

Religious ethics rarely enter into mainstream economic theory, but they are topics that [economics professor cum Eric Cantor slayer David] Brat, who describes himself in his writing as a Calvinist, has turned to repeatedly. In a 2011 article, “God and Advanced Mammon — Can Theological Types Handle Usury and Capitalism?” published in a journal of […]

Tyler Cowen has a post at the New York Times about how war can rejuvenate the economy in various ways. We need to be very careful not to jump on him and accuse him of being a war-monger. I remember when many people jumped on me for recommending a recession based on Christina Romer’s speech. […]