The Angry Bear

Assuming the Supreme Court issues a sweeping opinion overruling Roe, how will this affect the upcoming midterm elections?  This question is being widely examined, e.g., here, here, here.  My take is that the key issue is whether the personal stories of women (and teenagers) affected by abortion restrictions get told. First, a brief review of public opinion: Most Americans do not want to see Roe overruled.  The split is about 60/30.  People also...

Manufacturing and construction start out the month with positive prints As per usual, the new month starts with updates on manufacturing and construction. The ISM manufacturing index, and especially its new orders subindex, is an important short leading indicator for the production sector. This remained positive, but there has been a definite slowing in the past two months. In April the index declined from 57.1 to 55.4, and the new orders...

As CNN reports . . . “Sen. Susan Collins: Referencing the Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade (Politico) is ‘completely inconsistent’ with what Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh ‘said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office.’” Wow, whata surprise! Political appointees to SCOTUS might fib a little, ok more than a little, and probably a lot more to become a SCOTUS Justice. There is such a thing as...

Jacob Seitz, Twitter Users Roast Mitch McConnell After Statement on Roe v. Wade (dailydot.com) Comments from Twitter , , , As one commenter put it bluntly, “Get Bent McConnell.” In the statement, Republican Senate Leader McConnell refers to the leaked majority opinion drafted by Justice Samuel Alito as a “stunning breach” and an “attack on the independence of the Supreme Court.” McConnell said the leak was “yet another escalation in the...

In Texas a large portion of Plant ’22 has already happened. Central Texas corn emergence is already knee high, green, and waiting for the rains to continue this week. Other parts of the country have struggled to get seed in the ground either due to low soil temps, too much precipitation or no rain to speak of. This past week or so as rains and storms, some wreaking tornado havoc, have doused the land in various agriculturally important regions....

RJS, MarketWatch 666 Summary: New Home Sales Reported 8.6% Lower on Record Prices in March, after Prior Months Sales Revised Much Higher The Census report on New Residential Sales for March (pdf) estimated that new single family homes were selling at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 763,000 homes during the month, which was 8.6 percent (±12.9 percent)* below the revised February annual sales rate of 835,000, and 12.6 percent (±11.3 percent)...

First the usual warning – I am both ignorant and intellectually arrogant.  It should be assumed that I don’t know what I am talking about. Stealth technology hides airplanes, drones, and cruise missiles from radar which uses high frequency radio waves.  It does not hide them from radar which uses radio waves of wavelength a meter or more – the thickness of the stealthy covering would have to be similar to that wavelength.  This means that an F-35...

Major Economic Confusion  Anybody confused by recent economic reports is not alone. The BEA has just reported a totally unexpected decline in real GDP for the first quarter of a 1.4% annual rate.  At the same time layoffs have reached a half century low and employment continues to rise.  How can we have an apparently beginning recession with the hottest job market in decades? Probably this has to do with the sources of the reported decline,...

RJS, MarketWatch 666 1st Quarter GDP Shrunk at a 1.4% Rate on a Record Trade Deficit and Slower Growth of Inventories Our economy shrunk at a 1.4% rate in the 1st quarter, the first GDP reversal since the first quarter of 2020, as increased personal consumption of services and greater fixed investment were more than offset by weaker investment in inventories and a record trade deficit, which subtracted over 3 percent from GDP . . ....