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

Mainstream Press Blows Condi’s Coverup (war on terrorism)

That our new Sec. of State tried to bury the estimate that major world terrorist attacks tripled in 2004 is not news to the blog world. But now MSNBC is running the story via Reuters. Hopefully, a real debate on how best to fight the war on terror will finally begin. Whether this debate gets […]

Health Care Intelligence Failure?

This title was taken from Arnold Kling who is challenging the suggestion from AB and Kash that we do not get that much from all the money we spend on health care as compared to other nations. Arnold writes: That is, I believe that it is likely that, for the most part, Americans receive significantly […]

Pork for Paris Hilton

David Hogberg says he’s found an easy way to finance part of the $2 trillion of the Soc. Sec. transition costs: We can start with the Social Security system itself. In his book How Social Security Picks Your Pocket: A Story of Waste, Fraud, and Inequities, Joseph Fried estimates that “$71 billion per year, in […]

Japan’s Deflation…

…seems to never end. The Japanese economy slowed last year (again), and the BoJ’s hoped-for return of moderate inflation remains an elusive goal: Drop in consumer prices pressures Bank of Japan Consumer prices fell for a seventh straight year in the 12 months to end-March 2005, confirming that the economy remains stuck in deflation in […]

Bowyer’s Profits Per Job Measure: Do Two Wrongs Make

Forgive me for not finishing the title here, but after reading how Brad DeLong reacted to the latest Buzzcharts, to say there could be anything right about Jerry Bowyer’s series would be a farce. Brad writes: A huge number of people who are on payrolls don’t work for corporations: 21 million of them work for […]

David Altig’s Defense of Cato’s Free Lunch Claim

For the life of me, I don’t understand why a smart and honest conservative economist like David Altig would defend the Cato Institute’s claims as to the alleged benefits of privatization. To be fair, David is not saying there is some free lunch. Rather, he objects to this post from Mark Thoma by asserting that […]

After the Housing Boom: Impact on the Economy

When the housing boom ends, what is the possible impact on the US economy? This is a broad brush look at three major potential problems: 1) Increased Unemployment.2) Loss of mortgage equity withdrawal on consumer spending.3) Financial distress. Unemployment Last week’s post (Housing: After the Boom) looked back at the early ’90s housing bust. In […]

Neal Boortz On Our Foreign Dependence on Oil

Neal Boortz tells his listeners: “But the left doesn’t want us to reduce our reliance on foreign oil”, which drew a response from the Mahablog. Maybe Neil thinks the House GOP leadership is leftist given today’s comments from Edward Markey.

Will the Cato Institute Even Offer a Reply to Mark Thoma?

Our friend Mark Thoma is fairly new to blogging, but he has already figured out that Cato crowd lies a lot with respect to the Social Security debate. The most recent “Daily Debunker” from Cato discusses the Johnson-Flake proposal, which sounds to me like an old song: (a) reduce government expenditures by switching from wage […]

Tech Support Angry Bear Now Searchable

Deleted Request for Help getting the Google Search Box to work That was easy. I just had to change the sitesearch value from value=”http://www.angrybear.blogspot.com” to value=”angrybear.blogspot.com” You may now search angrybear! AB