The Angry Bear

Writing in The Atlantic in May 2021, Hoeg, Prasad, and Ghandi argued that the United States should delay vaccinating children against COVID-19 until vulnerable adults are vaccinated in poorer countries around the world.  A similar argument could now be made for delaying boosters, at least for people who are not at high risk.  An unvaccinated elderly person in India or Africa is thousands of times more likely to die from COVID-19 than a healthy,...

Real retail sales signal further expansion, but also continue to suggest slower payrolls growth ahead Nominal retail sales for the month of April were up 0.9%, and previous months were revised higher. That means that, after inflation, real retail sales for April were up 0.6%, a very positive number. Yesterday I wrote that, rather than a YoY comparison with last April, during the stimulus spending spree, the more important comparison was...

What Is The Worst Part Of The Current Inflation In the US we may have seen the peak of overall inflation, with the annualized CPI rate increasing at 8.3% in April, down from 8.5% in March, the highest rate of increase in 40 years. The issue has become the reported top concern of the US public, according to polling, with the hot job market apparently not offsetting the concerns that have arisen due to the emergence of this high rate of...

No economic data today (May 16) of significance; but tomorrow one of my favorite economic indicators, retail sales, will be reported for April. Since real retail sales lead employment and generally are a short leading indicator for the economy as a whole, I wanted to update on what I see as their importance right now. Here are real retail sales per capita (red) vs. real aggregate payrolls per capita (blue), both normed to 100 as of last...

RJS: Focus on Fracking Summary: Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a 21 year low, distillates supplies at a 17 year low; 300,000 bpd global oil surplus in April, despite loss of 1.2 million bpd from Russia & Kazakhstan; natural gas rigs at a 32 month high..   OPEC’s Report on Global Oil for April Thursday of this week saw the release of OPEC’s May Oil Market Report, which includes details on OPEC & global oil data for April, and hence it...

RJS, MarketWatch 666 Summary: Producer Prices Rose 0.5% in April; Record Annual Increase of 16.3% for Final Demand for Goods The seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 0.5% in April, as average prices for finished wholesale goods rose by 1.3% while final demand for services was unchanged . . . that increase followed a revised 1.6% increase in March, when average prices for finished wholesale goods rose by 2.4% and...

Harvest season has sprung upon us in a hurry. We had to spend a few evenings in the fields collecting squash, zucchini, cucumbers, and even dug up all of the potatoes, among the multitude of other things we planted this spring and continue to plant. It’s been a busy few weeks that have been hard both physically as well as mentally due to market conditions but we will get to that. Current Macro ag is coming in hot. Commodities futures are up...

RJS, Focus on Fracking Summary: Strategic Petroleum Reserve at a 21-year low, distillates supply at a 17-year low The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending May 6th indicated that after another drop in our oil exports, another oil withdrawal from the SPR, and an increase in oil that could not be accounted for, we again had oil to add to our stored...

Coronavirus dashboard for May 13: the virus will gradually become less lethal – because you can only die once, COVID-19 is still a pandemic and will gradually transition to an endemic. A year ago I thought that between nearly universal vaccinations and an increasing percentage of the population already infected, the virus would wane into a background nuisance by now. No more.  I am now thoroughly convinced that an unending series of variants...