a cross post by Susan of Texas Innovation Like many other pundits with good employer-provided health insurance, Megan McArdle has decided the rest of the country cannot have any type of national health care or insurance. She has given many reasons: rationing will kill your granny, drug companies need to charge the US more to […]

Ken Houghton remembers that Warren Buffett famously groused that he pays a lower percentage of his income in taxes than his secretary. Or the person who will come up with an actual cure for a cancer. Mark Cuban takes this one step further, pointing out the obvious: if we want to promote investment, “we should […]

Ken Houghton notes the obvious corollary to Bruce Webb’s post on the 1st: if you don’t “read the bill,” the obstructionists will lie about it. UPDATE: And now corrects his misreading (see Bruce’s update below, following on Mitt Shook’s comment). Milt Shook demonstrates in detail that, even if you do, people such as Alan Caruba […]

Robert Waldmann can’t resist writing about health care reform. The actual debate seems very focused on the public option — will the minority of Americans who have access to the new insurance exchanges have the opportunity to buy health insurance from the US government. Notably this is the aspect of reform opposed by the health […]

by cactus Holy wow. Here’s something in the NY Times: The Supreme Court on Monday ordered a federal trial court in Georgia to consider the case of Troy Davis, who is on death row in state prison there for the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer.…Seven of the witnesses against Mr. Davis have recanted, […]

by Bruce Webb In a previous post Robert asks the penetrating question Kevin Drum Huh? only to conclude quickly that he Robert was wrong and Kevin was right. I don’t agree for reasons laid out in comments, I invite anyone to join the discussion. But in the course of that a commenter suggested the answer […]

Robert Waldmann knows that either Robert Waldmann or Kevin Drum is very confused. Help me out here. update: Drum is right and I’m wrong. Thanks guest in comments. I should have checked before posting. Drum wrote But even if this works, no one thinks that such a bill can get 60 votes in the Senate. […]

By Spencer, At month end the S&P 500 PE on trailing operating earnings was around 24. In my model that is expensive, but not massively so. Except in the irrational exuberance market of the 1990s, a PE of over 20 has never been sustained and always signaled a major bear market. Trailing earnings does include […]

rdan You may have noticed the change in font size for text. I was experimenting with the font size and inadvertently saved the change, which for some reason does not readily change back. It should be easy through the widgets…however, meanwhile, let me know if the font size is easier or harder to read, and […]

Angry Bear is looking for an economist or other bright mind (no jokes please…well, some anyway)) to help us keep the issue of trade, trade policy, WTO, trade deficit/surpluses in the global and national contexts on the front burner at Angry Bear, not just sometimes. Send me an e-mail if you have the interest and […]