The Angry Bear

Weekly Indicators for October 10 – 14 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Just about everything looks awful. And one bright spot, consumer spending as measured by Redbook, just got dimmer. Needless to say, if consumer spending rolls over, that’s pretty much the ball game.. You can be brought up to the virtual moment in the ugliness by clicking over and reading, and it will reward...

Iranian Demonstrations Spread to Oil Workers by Barkey Rosser  The death of a Kuidish-Iranian woman not wearing a hijab to cover her hair has led to weeks of demonstrations led by mostly young women especially in the Kurdish parts of Iran.  However, they have gained the support of young men as well, despite a severe crackdown by the authorities that has now killed over 100 of the protestors.  The latest development that marks this becoming a...

“GM Strikes $69M Deal to Source Nickel and Cobalt from Australia,” DBusiness Magazine, Tim Keenan Like the rest of the big three and other auto manufacturers, GM is preparing to go electric for cars and abandon oil. GM Detroit secured a new source of cost-competitive nickel and cobalt in Australia for its Ultium battery cells. This is coming after negotiating a $69 million investment with Queensland Pacific Metals of Australia. Queensland...

September real retail sales lay another egg  – by New Deal democrat One of my favorite indicators, retail sales, was reported for September this morning, and it came in unchanged. Which means that after factoring in +0.4% inflation in September, real retail sales were down -0.4%. Which is not good, because real retail sales have gone nowhere in 18 months, and have been down every single month since April with the exception of August, and are...

It’s that time again*: we have reached the stage in the business cycle when normally sensible economists are alarmed that the Beveridge curve has shifted up. Paul Krugman is (as usual) on the side of relative reason, but he miss-used the curve in this figure Here he uses the data *and* the assumption that there is a stable Beveridge curve which can be used for medium term forecasting to calculate a level of unemployment consistent with a normal...

Republicans have made their desire to cut – or gut – Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid clear for decades.  Jack Fitzpatrick tells us that they are gearing up for another bite at the apple: Social Security and Medicare eligibility changes, spending caps, and safety-net work requirements are among the top priorities for key House Republicans who want to use next year’s debt-limit deadline to extract concessions from Democrats.The four...

“Patagonia: Life Imitates Theory,” Econospeak by Peter Dorman  When Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, completed the transfer of that company’s ownership to an environmental trust fund, it was front-page news across the country.  It came as something less than a shock to me, however, because I had described a very similar structure in a paper I wrote a few years ago about “pluralist social ownership”. First, it’s interesting what...

“September consumer inflation: primarily a function of the fictitious “owners’ equivalent rent” plus new cars”  – by New Deal democrat Since last November I’ve been hammering the fact that the official CPI measure of housing inflation, “owners’ equivalent rent,” seriously lagged, as in by a year or more, actual house prices as measured by the most popular housing indexes. At the time I wrote that OER was only up 3.1% YoY and core inflation...

“Initial claims continue to rise along with gas prices“  – by New Deal democrat Last week I wrote that initial jobless claims may have ended their recent downtrend. This week appears to have confirmed that. Initial claims rose 9,000 to 228,000, and the 4 week average rose 5,000 to 211,500. Continuing claims, which lag somewhat, increased 3,000 to 1,368,000: With OPEC deliberately cutting back production in order to cause a shortage in...