The Angry Bear

Jobless claims continue to trend higher, but no recession signal yet  – by New Deal democrat Initial jobless claims rose 9,000 to 244,000 last week, a 7.5 month high. The 4 week average rose 3,250 to 235,750, a 7 month high.  But the news wasn’t all negative, as continuing claims declined 41,000 to 1,331,000, which is only 25,000 above their 50 year low set on May 21: Two weeks ago I noted that reviewing the entire 50+ year history of...

Wikipedia offers an excellent synopsis of Regulatory Capture. In her book, Media Capture, Anya Schiffrin does so for Media Capture. In 1971, soon-to-be Associate Justice Lewis Powell Jr., then a corporate lawyer, wrote a memorandum to his friend Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chair of the Education Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce titled Attack On American Free Enterprise System. To his mind, the status quo, which he called The American Free...

June CPI report: bad, bad, bad, bad, bad  – by New Deal democrat In case for some reason you haven’t already heard, the inflation news for June was uniformly bad. Here is some of the carnage. For the month of June only:   overall inflation was up 1.3%, the highest monthly increase since 2005  energy inflation was up 7.5%  inflation less energy was up 0.7%  inflation in used cars and trucks was up 1.6%  inflation in rents was up 0.8%, the...

A well-deserved death for an ill-conceived plan for veterans. The 2018 VA MISSION Act was to help shape the future of veterans’ health care delivery by creating the Asset and Infrastructure Review (AIR) Commission. The modernization as planned by Trump was to be accomplished by downsizing VA hospitals and clinics with the goal of privatizing the VA’s healthcare services. Instead of following President Biden’s attempt at bipartisan support, both...

“Peatlands cover only a small fraction of the Earth’s surface (3%), yet store more than 15%–30% of terrestrial carbon (C) stocks” One of the terrible tipping points is oxidation of Peat due to warming (another is release of methane from melting tundra). But one key question is why didn’t the carbon in peat turn to methane? I think the reason is that methanogens can’t handle low pH and that a combination of waste and acid promotes takeover by...

In a previous post, I pointed out that Jeffrey Tucker, the founder of the libertarian Brownstone Institute, has a personal history on race related issues that . . . raises some awkward questions.  I concluded as follows: I have no idea what the truth is here or what Tucker’s views on race are.  But the willingness of at least some libertarians to make common cause with racists is deeply troubling.  Racism is not only wrong, it undermines support...

by Barkley Rosser Just How Bad Is Biden’s Trip To Saudi Arabia?  Yes, I posted on this a while ago, but at that time it was a maybe. Now he is in the air on his way, although, of course, to Israel and the West Bank first, where I have no complaint or comment much. So, basically what I said earlier largely holds, that this is not a trip with much good likely to come out of it. Main “goods”?: affirmation of in-place cease-fire in awful war in...

Coronavirus dashboard for July 11: BA.4&5 now over 80% of cases without creating a new wave, as COVID heads toward endemicity The CDC’s variant proportions data for this past week is out, and it shows that combined BA.4&5 made up slightly over 80% of all infections. BA.5 was at 65%, and BA.4 at 16%: [Note: graphs are not yet available. I will post both the national breakdown and the regional variations graphs as soon as they are...

Aggregate hours and payrolls of nonsupervisory workers and the onset of recessions An important reason I focus on whether or not the economy is heading into recession is that during recessions income and jobs both decline for the middle and working classes as a whole. In that regard, Jared Bernstein, a member of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors, posted two graphs over the weekend contra the panic about a potential negative Q2 GDP reading. ...