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

A simple Misunderstanding of How Tariffs Work

October 15, 2024 Letters from an American After Trump’s bizarre performance last night in Oaks, Pennsylvania, when he stopped taking questions and just swayed to his self-curated playlist for 39 minutes, his campaign this morning canceled a scheduled interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box, according to co-host of the show Joe Kernen. The campaign did not, though, […]

The Case for the 28th Amendment

This is a guest post by Charles Euchner, a political scientist and former special projects editor at New America. Euchner is the author of the forthcoming The Rules of Activism: Political and Social Movements and the Fight for Democracy (Polity Press, 2025). He can be reached at awriteratlarge.com. By Charles Euchner Why are we waiting? […]

Where housing affordability is worst and costs are highest in the U.S.

– By Jasmine Cui and Matthew Danbury NBC News Across the country, the prospect of home ownership is slipping out of reach for the ordinary buyer. The affordability gap — an estimate of the difference between an area’s median household income and how much income is necessary to afford payments on a median-priced home in […]

Commenting and Commenters on Angry Bear

– For some reason (we are trying to find out why) Word Press and Askimet is deciding some commenters are new and need to be approved again. Both Joel and I are aware of this and are working with another group to fix the issue. The system was changed by input from somewhere else (WP?) […]

Household balance sheets are in good shape

– by New Deal democrat  One of my fundamentals-based systems for monitoring the economy is to look at the health of household balance sheets. Most recessions happen when consumers are under stress. If real wages are growing, if assets that can be leveraged or cashed in (mortgage payments, home equity, stocks) are increasing in value, if […]

Medicare Advantage Plan Members Will See Higher Prices and Less Service

While this is called Medicare, it is Medicare which has been commercialized. Medicare pays additional fees subsidizing the insurance plan companies (United Healthcare, WellCare, Script, etc. offering Medicare Advantage plans Not only have healthcare plans are cutting services, healthcare systems are also pulling out of Medicare Advantage Plans. Both Joel and I discussed twenty-something different […]

Executive summary for Renewables 2024

A year or two back, I had a conversation with the IEA about using their renewables data to present at Angry Bear. They asked that I keep true to the presentation. They also ask that I not use their oil reports as that is sold to customers of that report. It must be more detailed […]

2nd Look at Local Housing Markets in September

– by Bill McBride Calculated Risk NOTE: The tables for active listings, new listings and closed sales all include a comparison to September 2019 for each local market (some 2019 data is not available). This is the second look at several early reporting local markets in September. I’m tracking over 40 local housing markets in […]

“A Brave and Cunning Prince”

For Indigenous Persons Day: a review of “A Brave and Cunning Prince” by James Horn  – by New Deal democrat Recently I read the above entitled book, and found it fascinating. Below are excerpts from an online book review, to which I have added further detail in brackets. I highly recommend it: “In the mid-sixteenth […]