The Angry Bear

I will get to an actual policy discussion in part II of this pair of posts, but first I have to ask “what the hell is happening at the New York Times”? I am old enough to remember a time when it had actual editors, but the Journal of Record seems to be edited about as much as my posts here (spelll check if you are lucky). First it seems that  Damien Cave and Amy Chang Chien believe that Richard Nixon was president of the USA in 1979. I insert a...

Weekly Indicators for January 15 – 19 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The big headlines yesterday were that stocks made a new all time high, for the first time in two years. Meanwhile, estimated plus actual earnings so far for the 4th Quarter of 2023 were on track for their lowest number since Q1 of 2021. Either corporate earnings are going to rebound sharply or stocks have...

According to yesterday’s navel-gazing piece in the Boston Globe*, “on-the-fence” voters are edging to supporting Trump because they feel looked down upon by Democrats. WTF? Do they seriously believe that Trump *doesn’t* look down on his supporters? It is blindingly obvious that the only person on the planet that Trump cares about is Donald Trump. The toolkit of Trump and the Trump GOP consists entirely of cultivating resentment: resentment of American...

Briefly noted: existing home sales appear to be bottoming near 30 year lows as prices continue to firm  – by New Deal democrat Last month I wrote that existing home sales “are likely in the process of bottoming, as they have been in the range of 3.79 million to 4.10 million for the past five months:” That continued to be the case in December, as sales declined -3,000 on an annualized basis to 3.78 million: On a longer term basis,...

More on what is going on with Purdue and the Sacklers. This is probably one of the sorriest events one could ever read about. The sales success of OxyContin was promulgated on it being nonaddictive. By taking a 1980 brief/letter reporting the results on the use of opioids in a HOSPITAL SETTING and deleting such setting, Purdue was able to magnify the sales of OxyContin a time release dose of an opioid. The sales gave the Sackler family the...

The alleged “appeal” of Ron DiSantis is that he’s “Trump without the baggage.” So why is DiSantis (and Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, the other Trump imitators) doing so poorly? The answer is that the Trumpenproletariat *want* the Trump baggage. To them, that’s his appeal.The Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan nailed this decades ago: the medium is the message. Trump is the medium and thus Trump is the message. Anyone else is a different medium...

Housing construction changes little in December; but increased mortgage rates from H2 2023 have not yet been digested  – by New Deal democrat For this post, I’m going to show what the housing market looks like from most to least leading of the indicators. That shows that, although this morning’s release for housing permits and starts for December was generally positive, it is more likely that housing construction will decline rather than...

 A key factor in many manufacturing companies is the outsourcing of the manufacturing of components which the parent company has become expert in creating, manufacturing, and quality control of components. Unless a company’s employee is to be on site, it is difficult to ensure the quality of manufacture. The outsourced company does not have the innate ownership of the sourcing company. Been at this too long. I was reading on Linked-In how a bunch...

This piece by Lloyd Alter is about household indoor air contaminants. The reasoning for this is . . . Homes are far tighter than what they used to be by design. There is much less of an outside air exchange today. Unless, the home design allows it to breath. We are seeing a higher level of air pollutants which impact our health over time. Lloyd is asking us to step back and take a look at what everyday life dangers lie in within our homes....

Jobless claims: bar one week, the lowest number of layoffs in over half a century  – by New Deal democrat To reiterate my theme from last week, we’re back to the virtuous scenario where almost nobody is getting laid off. Initial jobless claims last week declined -16,000 to 187,000. Except for one week in September 2022, this is the lowest number in over 50 years (since 1969, to be more precise). The 4-week average declined -4,750 to 203,250,...