The Angry Bear

and we have no one to blame but ourselves. J. P. Jefferson suggested this opinion piece on December 19, 2023. I just ran across J. P. Jefferson’s recommendation again or for the first time, sigh. I just do not remember. I was able to sign into this WSJ Kevin Williamson piece even though I do not have a paid subscription. Sometimes and when you create a logon, they let you have so many freebies per month. Hoping you will subscribe to their...

Thank you for your comments. Bill

Consumer inflation remains all about the lagged effect of house prices  – by New Deal democrat Consumer inflation in December continued to be a tale of the relative importance of gas prices vs. the lagged effect of home prices. Headline inflation increased 0.3%, and was up 3.4% YoY. YoY headline inflation has bounced between 3.1%-3.7% for the past 6 months, i.e., ever since the gas price peak of June 2022 passed out of the YoY comparisons....

My friend Gunter grew up in the German Democratic Republic (“East Germany”). He eventually established himself as a professor at the Genetics Institute at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenburg, He first came to my attention through a series of papers he published in the early 1980s that I read as a postdoc. Then, in the summer of 1986, I got to attend a meeting on the Molecular and Developmental Biology of Drosophila, sponsored by the European...

The good news on jobless claims continues  – by New Deal democrat The recent streak of very positive news on jobless claims continued this week. Initial claims declined -1,000 to 201,000. The four week moving average declined -250 to 207,750. With the usual one week delay, continuing claims declined -34,000 to 1.834 million. The first two are close to their post-pandemic lows of one year ago, and continuing claims are the lowest since the...

Good commentary by Merrill Goozner. I subscribe to his site. He, I and other have gotten together and talked. I did ask the Lown Institute if I can publish their top ten examples of profiteering and dysfunction in health care. This group make my spidery senses tingle. Rather ask than get a reprimand. Got that one time and I knew who did it. It backfired on them and they were dropped by their host. Good writer and I was posting their commentaries...

It is bad enough with high healthcare costs for doctors, hospitals, medicines, care, insurance, etc. But when all of them start to allow you credit so they can collect their moneys leaving you to fend for yourself, it becomes outrageous. A common interest rate for payment plans is 16% to 19% with private equity. It is a rip off of those who are ill and the families who are willing to sacrifice all. It is unfortunate banks, etc., are willing to...

2023 was the year of the do-nothing House Republicans. What will happen in 2024?

Asymptosis » Economic Origin Stories and the State of the World, Steve Roth. Origin stories and creation myths pack a pretty hefty weight of import in human understandings of the world. Examples are too numerous to mention. What I’ve noticed in the field of economics is such origin stories are often taken (mistakenly) to fully explain the current state of affairs. I’m going to discuss two examples here. 1. Why Money Has Value. The “double...

We have been needing more people, people of some importance, to say something about the economy besides how bad it is. Mind you, no matter how good the recovery is; the negatives will still flow from the other side of the room. If you have been reading New Deal democrat’s commentary at Angry Bear each day, you already have a pretty good idea of where we will land. NDd: “Real retails sales stopped deteriorating YoY last spring, and have been more...