The Angry Bear

Coronavirus dashboard for April 20: there’s a new subvariant in town Let me start with the current overview. As of today, Nationally cases are now rising sharply, up to 41,500, an increase of 25% in the past week: Hospitalizations are generally flat at slightly over 10,000, but new admissions have risen steadily, by 8% over the last 11 days: Deaths have continued to decline, to 452, a level lower than all times during the pandemic...

Rachel Maddow: Except there is a taped recording existing between McCarthy, Cheney, and others. Rachel Maddow “sharing an audio of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy saying that he would call Donald Trump and recommend that he resign in the wake of the January 6th attacks and with a second impeachment looming, as reported by Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns of the New York Times in their new book “This Will Not Pass,” and contradicting McCarthy’s...

In a post titled Failing at the Basics, Josh Marshall leads with this: A new AP poll says that 54% of Americans think President Biden has been “not tough enough” on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. These kinds of public perceptions can be shaped by perceptions of a leader as much as they drive them. So you think Biden is weak as your starting point and therefore you think he’s not being tough enough on Russia rather than the other way around....

For twenty-something years, I was in Livingston County and living with Republicans and Republican politics. It is not easy being a Democrat there. If it was not for the stupid things many Republican constituents say, it would have been downright difficult if they had a brain. They kept pitching down the center with their remarks and I kept hitting homeruns on Facebook and in replies locally. Some background; Livingston County population makeup...

Housing starts show continued strength in March, while single family permits indicate softness ahead The continued strength in total housing permits and starts shown in this morning’s report for March was surprising; but the series with the most signal and least noise, single family permits, betrayed weakness. While typically permits, especially single family permits, lead the series, in the past year, however, there has been a unique divergence...

by Joseph Joyce The IMF’s Proposed Policies on the Management of Capital Flows The IMF’s views on the advantages and drawbacks of capital flows have substantially evolved over time. The Fund reversed its opposition to capital controls in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2007-09, when it adopted the “Institutional View on the Liberalization and Management of Capital Flows.” That framework included capital flows measures (CFMs) as...

On Morning Joe today, they interviewed Senator Mallory McMorrow. She mentioned toward the end (around 8:02 minutes in) that in 2014 the Republican party had less than 50% of the vote. However, they had 72% of the seats. Unfortunately, it was toward the end and no one’s ears perked up upon hearing this. She notes it will not get any better unless they are voted out of office. At Crooks and Liars today is a post of James Carville suggesting that...

Commenter and Blogger Dale Coberly I have been reading William Manchester’s biography of Winston Churchill. I do not know how reliable Manchester is, but I think I have learned more about a couple of things I thought I knew about, which might be worth thinking about with regard to events in Ukraine. Churchill was a very gifted man who made mistakes, but he got Hitler right when no one else did, and so earned his place in History. In the past I...

The worst interest rate upturn since 1994 is likely to produce the worst housing downturn in over a decade No economic news of note today; but tomorrow we will see housing permits and starts for March, and on Wednesday existing home sales. So let’s take an important look at housing. The recent increase in mortgage rates to over 5% is the most serious interest rate threat to housing in at least the past 30 years. As the below graph shows, the...