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

EPA Scientists Say They Were Pressured to Downplay Health Harms From Chemicals

Author Sharon Lerner at ProPublica featured at MedPage Today AB: Bit of a rewrite to shorten this up for readers at Angry Bear. Just when you think agencies and the management team will do the right thing, they do not. Lower echelon scientists to make public the issues with the findings that were not theirs […]

John Deere Maintains Profits and Shareholder Value by Whacking Labor

Nothing new under the sun here. Maintaining profits has been a matter of fact for decades. It became more popular under Pres. Reagan. Deere Reports Strong Profits Amid Layoffs of Workers Across Iowa, Des Moines Register August 13, 2024 and Kevin Baskins at the Des Moines Register reports on the Deere & Company layoffs across […]

EV fueling ports vs gas station nozzles

Kevin Drum has a post up about the present and future of EV charging stalls in the US. As of 2023, the number was 184,000, with public charging stalls outnumbering Tesla stalls 6:1. Is that a lot or a little? Well, lots of people say that they’re holding off buying EVs because of the range, […]

Health Care Reform and the 2024 Elections

Health Care Reform and the 2024 U.S. Elections — Low Visibility, High Stakes. by Jonathan Oberlander, Ph.D. New England Journal of Medicine Exploring the what-ifs in healthcare and the ACA in an election year. What if Trump wins the presidency and Repubs control the House and the Senate. The author discusses the alternatives also. Abortion and reproductive […]

Fannie and Freddie: Single Family Serious Delinquency Rate Ticked Up in August

by Bill McBride Calculated Risk Single-family serious delinquencies increased slightly in August, and multi-family serious delinquencies decreased slightly. Freddie Mac reported that the Single-Family serious delinquency rate in August was 0.52%, up from 0.51% June. Freddie’s rate is down year-over-year from 0.55% in August 2023.  This is below the pre-pandemic lows. Freddie’s serious delinquency rate peaked in February […]

Abbreviated Report on Income in the US for 2023

I only provided a portion of the report and the 6 figures (one through six). The full report on Income can be found here: Income in the United States: 2023, Gloria Guzman and Melissa Kollar. The economy was not as bad as the politicians and trump make it out to be, The numbers do not […]

About r-g

if long-term interest rate r is less than the trend growth rate of GDP g Yesterday (technically very early today) I promised a post on why long-term Treasury interest rates are very important. In particular it is very important if the long-term interest rate r is less than the trend growth rate of GDP g. […]

Cage Wrestling Returns on October 1 Vance v Walz

Is it ok to forgo the “needless to say” phrase to introduce an idea or expectation already known? Yeah probably. What is going to happen on October 1 is a cage fight or no holds barred mental-wrestling event with no physical contact. The two VP candidates will go at it on national TV with probable […]

The key to longevity

You may have read about “blue zones,” certain communities that have an unusually large number of centenarians: Loma Linda in California, Okinawa in Japan, Sardinia in Italy, Nicoya in Costa Rica, and Ikaria in Greece. Since we can’t all move there, the next best thing would be to discover the key to longevity in these […]

the “Alabamization of America”

I have a collection of sources I can pull from to use here at Angry Bear. Joyce @ Civil Discourse is one of them. Prof Heather Cox Richardson @ Letters from an American is another. Robert Reich, Merrill Goozner @ GoozNews, Lloyd Alter @ Carbon Upfront, etc. It allows me to present information I would […]