The Angry Bear

The silver standard, one hundred and Thirty pieces of Silver’s thought “In evaluating fundraising for congressional candidates, the model now places more emphasis on contributions received within the candidate’s state. Fundraising is a highly nationalized activity these days; Democrats in California and New York regularly contribute to Senate campaigns like that of Democrat Jaime Harrison of South Carolina, who raised a record amount of money in...

The Democrats seem to be a bit uncertain about how to respond to the Dobbs ruling overturning Roe.  This isn’t surprising.  They face enormous pressure from their voters to “do something”, but there is, in fact, little they can do that will materially improve the situation of pregnant women in the short term.  Despite the moral urgency of the situation, they are forced to (mostly) play a long game, hardly an enviable position to be in.  Let’s take a...

RJS: MarketWatch 666 Summary: modest revision. The internals were revised as much as I’ve ever seen. PCE growth from 3.1% to 1.8%, real gross private domestic investment growth from 0.5% to 5.0%. Mostly due to greater inventories. Those 1st quarter inventories set up the 2nd quarter for a fall. ~~~~~~~ 1st Quarter GDP Revised to Show Our Economy Shrunk at a 1.6% Rate ~~~~~~~ The Third Estimate of our 1st Quarter GDP from the Bureau of...

Two long leading indicators – real money supply and credit conditions – worsen  – by New Deal democrat ~~~~~~~ M1 and M2 money supply for May was reported yesterday by the Fed. The former was unchanged for the month, and the latter was up a tiny 0.1%: That is significant. Why? Because real money supply is a long leading indicator. Real M2 fell out of favor after failing to actually decline YoY prior to the 2001 and 2008 recessions, but a...

I have a post up at Science-Based Medicine about the pitfalls and dangers of moralistic political thinking. The focus is on COVID, but the lessons are much more broadly relevant. Here’s the lede: The American policy response to COVID left a great deal to be desired. Figuring out what went wrong and how to do better next time should be at the top of our list going forward. But getting reform right will be difficult if we succumb to the temptation...

House prices continued to surge through April; expect no meaningful moderation in the CPI anytime soon House price increases continued to go through the roof as of April, as reported this morning in both the Case Shiller and FHFA house price indexes. The Case Shiller national index rose another 2.1% for the month and 20.4% YoY, just 0.1% below last month’s biggest YoY% gain ever, while the FHFA purchase only index rose 1.6% for the month, and...

“A few thoughts on the abortion ruling,” by INFIDEL753 There’s no longer any room to pretend that the Supreme Court is a mere non-political referee interpreting the law in a vacuum.  If it ever was that, it’s now just another locus of political power, like the House, Senate, and presidency, a utensil for imposing the will of whichever ideology or group manages to secure control of it.  At present, that control rests with the forces of...

by Joseph Joyce The Global Financial Cycle and Emerging Market Economies The Federal Reserve’s latest increase in its policy rate is a signal of its desire to reestablish its credibility after U.S. inflation rose to 8.6% in May, and a precursor of more hikes.  Similar increases have been implemented by the Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank, and the European Central Bank has announced that an increase in its policy rate will occur in...

Hey, if you are not listening to this, you should be. It is more along the lines of “what did you know and when did you know it.” One of Mark Meadow’s assistants is reviewing what she knew with the committee.

A comment on housing, inflation, and Fed policy (and a side comment on spending) No big economic news today, and as usual little State reporting on COVID over the weekend, so let me make a couple of points. As an initial note, the big report I will be paying attention to this week is personal spending and income, which will be reported on Thursday. As I’ve noted several times recently, the goods-producing side of the economy has been fading...