Via Naked Capitalism:
Place based economic conditions and the geography of the opioid overdose crisis
By Shannon Monnat, Associate Professor, Syracuse University. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website
Over 400,000 people in the U.S. have died from opioid overdoses since 2000. However, there is widespread geographic variation in fatal opioid overdose rates, and the contributions of prescription opioids, heroin, and synthetic opioids (e.g., fentanyl) to the crisis vary substantially across different parts of the U.S. In a studypublished today in the American Journal of Public Health, we classified U.S. counties into six different opioid classes, based on their overall rates and rates of growth in fatal overdoses from

(Dan here….)  Via the New York Times comes an article on the Social Security shortfall.  No explanations given for what the shortfall context is, and not till the end was a fix suggested.  In comments calling SS a ponzi scheme (with no explanation) was common, or with the fix mostly was about lifting the cap.  Only one commenter referred readers to a Bruce Bartlett article from 2013 on the matter,
From an e-mail by Dale Coberly

Forgive me,  I have studied this problem and may actually know what I am talking about.

All we have to do is pay an extra dollar per week per person per year.  After next year It will be more like a dollar and ten cents.  And if we wait another year it will be about a dollar and twenty cents for the first few years,  then a great

Regional Fed indexes confirm that manufacturing is flat
[A reminder: this week I’m on vacation, so light posting is the rule.]
Earlier this week the Empire State Manufacturing Index went negative. This morning the Philly Index just barely avoided the same, reported at up +0.3 for June:

The more leading new orders index declined to +8.3.

This means the average of NY and Philly is a little below -1, while the average of all five regional Fed indexes as of their last reports is +0.8.

Last week I pointed out that the average manufacturing work week had fallen to a point consistent with an oncoming recession, and based on past patterns, I expect layoffs to follow. This week’s two regional indexes show that the leading manufacturing sector, as of the most

By New Deal democrat
Weekly Indicators for June 10 – 14 at Seeking Alpha
My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.
The divergence between the near term vs. longer term forecast is increasing, and the risk that the forecast is too optimistic is asymmetrical, because for the economy, Trump’s chaotic tariff behavior cannot improve the situation, but can definitely cause harm.

By New Deal democrat
The slowdown cometh
I submitted a long post on the above to Seeking Alpha. They haven’t put it up yet. When they do, I’ll link to it here.   UPDATE: Here’s the link.
Long story short: you all know that a year ago I forecast a slowdown by about mid-year this year. Everything except for portions of GDP and jobs has acted in accordance with that forecast.
And, judging by this morning’s ADP jobs report for May:

the official jobs report may finally follow suit this Friday

By Joseph Joyce
The Rise and Fall of FDI
After the global financial crisis,  international capital flows contracted, especially bank lending in Europe. Foreign direct investment (FDI) by multinational firms, however, provided a steady source of external finance, particularly for emerging market economies. The McKinsey Global Institute has calculated that the global stock of FDI increased from 46% of world GDP in 2007 to 57% in 2016 ($25 trillion to $41 trillion). But FDI flows fell by 27% in 2018 according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and this drop followed a decline of 16% in the previous year. We have entered a new period of contraction by multinational firms, and in particular, U.S.-based multinationals.
A

Kenneth Thomas (an AB contributor) was quoted April 7  in the Journal a second time on the general question of how to solve the problem of subsidy bidding wars.  Unfortunately it is behind a paywall…but worth pointing to…

 WSJ.COM

Opinion | Pass a Law to Combat Rent-Seeking
Congress could invoke the Commerce Clause to limit destructive competition over corporate subsidies.

By New Deal democrat
Weekly Indicators for May 27 – 31 at Seeking Alpha

My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.
There was a touch of weakening across several timeframes. The economy is just weak enough that continuing trade and tariff tantrums could take a slowdown and do enough damage to make it a downturn.
As usual, clicking over and reading should be informative for you, and helps me just a little bit for the effort I put into the work.

By New Deal democrat
Resolving the contradiction between the yield curve and housing

If you listen to the yield curve, it is screaming “recession!”  If you listen to new home sales, they are saying “no worries!”  One of them is wrong.
For the last couple of weeks, I have been going back over history in an effort to resolve the contradictory signals. One important portion of that work has been to focus on the non-financial leading indicators, and in particular, balancing the consumer stress indirectly measured by housing permits vs. the producer stress measured by corporate profits.
The outcome of  factoring corporate profits into the mix is telling. This work is up at Seeking Alpha. As usual, clicking over and reading helps reward me with a little $$$ for

Initial claims, temporary staffing point to weaker May jobs report

 – by New Deal democrat
As I’ve noted a few times recently, I’m paying additional attention to the weekly jobless claims numbers, partly because I suspected that the late Easter this year resulted in some residual seasonality (which I think has been demonstrated), and partly because if my slowdown forecast is correct, it ought to start showing up there.

The initial claims report this morning covered the week during which the BLS surveyed employers for the May jobs report coming out in two weeks. In the four weeks that coincided with the April report, initial claims made new 49 year lows, averaging 201,500. In the past five weeks that will coincide with the May report, the average has

By New Deal democrat
Weekly Indicators for May 20 – 24 at Seeking Alpha
My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.
The big contradiction between what the yield curve is forecasting, and what most of the rest of the long leading indicators are forecasting, continues.  Meanwhile Trump’s tariff  “policies” are creating chaos in other sectors.
As usual, clicking over and reading should not only bring you up to date, but helps reward me with a penny or two for my work.

By New Deal democrat
Weekly Indicators for May 13 – 17 at Seeking Alpha
My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.
The stock market’s “tariff tantrum” is driving down interest rates in bonds. We are in a time when government policy decisions – sometimes just passing tweets – are driving winners and losers in economic activity. And these can have immediate impact, disrupting the scheme of long leading -> short leading -> coincident indicators of the economy.
As usual, clicking over and reading helps reward me a tiny little bit for my efforts.

Dan here…the United States Library of Congress will be archiving and collecting material from Angry Bear. The overall digital archiving project began in ernest since 2013.   Abbie Grotke,  Lead Librarian Web Archiving Team, affirmed the process.  Below are excerpts from the letter of request and the Library website.

The United States Library of Congress has selected your website for inclusion in the historic collection of Internet materials related to the Economics Blogs Web Archive. We consider your website to be an important part of this collection and the historical record.
The Library of Congress preserves important cultural artifacts and provides enduring access to them. The Library’s traditional functions, acquiring, cataloging, preserving and

By Dale Coberly
KOTLICOFF ON THE HILL
with Social Security

Larry Kotlikoff wrote an editorial that appeared May 14 in “The Hill:”  https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/443465-social-security-just-ran-a-9-trillion-deficit-and-nobody-noticed

He cried, “Wolf! Wolf! Social Security ran a 9 Trillion Dollar Deficit last year and nobody noticed!”

He went on to explain this was the increase in the “infinite horizon Present Value of the Unfunded Deficit” from 2017 to 2018.

He neglected to explain that the infinite horizon Present Value of the Taxable Payroll is over ONE THOUSAND TRILLION Dollars. Or that the 9 trillion dollars did not come from Social Security spending any more money, or old people getting more benefits, or taxpayers running out of money. It

By Joseph Joyce
The Exorbitant Privilege in a World of Low Interest Rates
The U.S. dollar has long enjoyed what French finance minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing called an “exorbitant privilege.”  The U.S. can finance its current account deficits and acquisition of foreign assets by issuing Treasury securities that are held by foreign central banks as reserves. The dollar’s share of foreign reserves, while falling, remains over 60%.  But in a world of low interest rates, how exorbitant is this privilege, and is it solely a U.S. phenomenon?
John Plender of the Financial Times has pointed out that U.S. Treasury bonds offer a rate of return that matches or is higher than that of other government bonds with similar risk ratings.  This is true whether we look at

Econospeak (Barkley Rosser, pgl, Peter Dorman, Tom Walker) is in the financial section along with  Bonddad blog (New Deal democrat) and  Capital Ebbs and Flows (Joseph Joyce), and I am proud to say have a direct connection to Angry Bear (under general blogs…).
Dear Dan,
I wanted to let you know that your blog, Angry Bear Blog has been featured in the Top 100 Economics Blogs of 2019
One of the significant changes this year has been the removal of newspaper blogs such as Bloomberg View and Real Time Exchange to focus on more niche blogs. The lack of female economist (and bloggers) has been a common criticism of this list. I’ve made an effort to include more female bloggers, but if you have any suggestions, I can consider them for the 2020 list.