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

Mr. Speaker

Here’s Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, speaking on Fox News Sunday: Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert – having already enraged some New Yorkers with his remarks about local office-holders’ “unseemly scramble” for federal money after 9/11 – yesterday opened a second front. On “Fox News Sunday,” the Illinois Republican insinuated that billionaire financier […]

Angry Bear Reader in BusinessWeek

… though it’s surely for reasons other than reading and commenting here. In any case, Barry R. was interviewed by Business Week on the subject of markets and the election: Q: Who do you think will win the election? A: I’m a numbers geek at heart, so I watch four quantitative factors that have had […]

Linguaphiles

Apparently, the team here at Angry Bear uses some big words, at least as counted by this survey conducted by The Adventures of Prometheus and Sabrina, which is based on something called Peter Schmies’s Word Classification Test. We were, not surprisingly, edged out by Digby, Dave Neiwert, and Atrios, but managed to nip TBogg. For […]

GDP Growth Estimate Lowered

The BEA just released its first revision to its estimate of GDP growth in the April-June period of 2004. The estimate of GDP growth has been revised down to 2.8% from an initial guess of 3.0%. This is unequivocally slow growth. To put this in historical context, during the last expansion (1994-1999) only 4 out […]

McCain and Mr. Nice Guy

John McCain has been involved in decisions made by both the Kerry and Bush campaigns recently. A couple of weeks ago McCain asked Bush to condemn the Swift Boat ads. Bush has repeatedly refused. Nevertheless, McCain has continued stumping for Bush, and is scheduled to make numerous campaign appearances with Bush in the Southwest over […]

I Want to Title This Post…

… “Dumbass.” But the presidency is an instution that I genuinely respect. In any case, here’s our president: On environmental issues, Mr. Bush appeared unfamiliar with an administration report delivered to Congress on Wednesday that indicated that emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases were the only likely explanation for global warming over the […]

Good Cookin’

Hearty thanks to the Chef for his zesty servings of economics and politics. If, like me, you liked what you saw, be sure to get seconds and his permanent blog, Ragout. Cooking puns aside, I think he did a great job filling in and, based on the comments, my readers agree. AB

Postcards from Old Europe – Worker’s paradise quo vadis? The geriatric communist cabal that ran East Germany used to call the country a workers’s paradise. Just too bad that their vision of paradise was a little skewed – but what can one expect from atheists in this regard. Reunfication brought East Germans into the fold […]

10 Nobel Winners Endorse Kerry

10 Nobel Prize winning economists issued a statement endorsing John Kerry yesterday. The differences between President Bush and John Kerry with respect to leadership on the economy are wider than in any other Presidential election in our experience … President Bush’s fiscal irresponsibility threatens the long-term economic security and prosperity of our nation. They join […]

Rising Health Costs: Short Run Job Loss, Long Run Wage Cuts

A while back, I criticized Hillary Clinton for arguing that national health insurance would create jobs. She wrote: American companies are outsourcing jobs to countries where the price of labor does not include health coverage, which costs Americans jobs and puts pressure on employers who continue to cover their employees at home. I pointed out […]