The Angry Bear

Average and aggregate nonsupervisory wages for February 2023  – by New Deal democrat There’s no significant economic news today, so let’s update a couple of income indicators important to average American working households. Namely, because we now have the inflation report for February as well as payrolls, we can update average and aggregate nonsupervisory wages. Average hourly earnings for nonsupervisory employees increased 0.5% on a...

Putting on a different hat today. My background includes supply chain management. I am look at what the industry experts are seeing and whether I agree with them. Much of what I have seen over the last two years is a repeat of 2008. We again are late to beginning issues. And again, we are waking up late to the beginning of the end of the same issues. No Cassandras amongst us. Good article . . . The Fed’s supply chain pressure gauge just went...

Naomi Oreskes: All good myths have a kernel of truth. The other title: MAGA: You’ve been played. In her book: The Big Myth, How American Business Taught us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market she researched the history of the source of the position and ideology of “Free Market” capitalism void of regulation. It came out of her work researching big tobacco and climate change for her book: Merchants of Doubt. The short of the...

In your face …, Homeless on the High Desert, Gda says . . . October 21, 2017 in White Rose “In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves...

Escape from Muddle Land, Econospeak, Peter Dorman Let’s get the up-or-down part of this review over with quickly: Escape from Model Land: How Mathematical Models Can Lead Us Astray and What We Can Do About It by Erica Thompson is a poorly written, mostly vacuous rumination on mathematical modeling, and you would do well to ignore it. Now that that’s done, we can get on with the interesting aspect of this book, its adaptation of trendy radical...

Dale Coberly talking about the French President Macron forcing retirement reform and what could result if US Social Security is paid for by taxes on the rich in income. Macron Bypasses Parliament With ‘Nuclear Option’ on Retirement Age Hike, commondreams.org, Jessica Corbett [The following is copied from article cited in link, with some editing by me. My short comment is below.] “Amid protests against French President Emmanuel Macron’s...

Some information on Student loans sitting in SCOTUS. I would think the big issue here is who has standing. The states do not. Conservative jurists demand “textualism” to get what they want, except when a statute’s words thwart their desired goal. But by using a new trick, they break their own rules. That’s how they blew up the EPA’s Clean Power Rule and may soon eviscerate Biden’s student loan relief. The Conservative Justices and the “Major...

Industrial production ‘meh’ in February, but down sharply since last summer; real manufacturing and trade sales forecast to decline in Febuary  – by New Deal democrat Industrial production was unchanged for the month of February, while manufacturing production rose +0.1%. But the bad news is that both were revised lower for the past 5 months, as shown on the two graphs below: As a result, industrial production (blue below) is now -1.8% below...

An early attempt as to explaining the drug market. It is a start and I have to program myself to understand what is said. Brief and down to earth with pictures too! Much of this is a C&P with some editing. Much credit to the authors for giving us this opportunity to understand. Welcoming a New Year with new drug prices, 46brooklyn Research This year has proven to be little different from past years. In keeping with tradition (for as long...

Housing construction: good news and bad news  – by New Deal democrat This morning’s report on housing construction contained both good news and bad news. First, the good news. Both permits (gold in the graph below) and starts (blue) increased, the former by 185,000 on an annualized rate, the latter by 129,000: It is very possible that January’s rate of 1.339 million permits annualized and 1.321 starts will be the low for this cycle....