The Angry Bear

Revisions to Q4 GDP made real final sales worse, a potential portent of near in time recession  – by New Deal democrat A month ago, following another blogger, I took a look at real final sales, and real final sales to domestic purchasers, in the GDP – which increased less than 0.5% and just above 0% in Q4, and showed that in the past 60 years, only in the deep slowdowns of 1966 and 1987 were the numbers that low without having been followed...

I think I missed this one by Michael Smith. I did not delete it out of my In-Box/ Even so it is interesting . . . Death to Farm Credit from Those on High, Farmer and Economist, Mike Smith I’m in between fall crop planting and have to focus so I am going to run this like the rancher on the clock. Farm Credit System History  In 1916 when the Farm Credit System was established there were 6 million farms that employed around 30% of the US...

I was no general, field grade officer, or even an officer in 1970. Just a three-strip Sergeant in my 3rd year stationed at Lejeune drinking the water and bathing in it. Someone had a brilliant idea we should be trained in riot control since Camp Lejeune was not far from Washington D.C. Some elements out of Fort Bragg would join us. As we were Federal soldiers, our facing civilians is frowned upon. In any case, we were trained, never called...

Almost nobody is still getting laid off, but this week, it’s not good enough  – by New Deal democrat Today and tomorrow update the two remaining positive sectors of the economy: jobs and real personal income. And the first one continued to give excellent historical readings, but relatively speaking suffered in comparison to their all-time best readings from exactly one year ago. Initial jobless claims rose 7,000 to 198,000, while the more...

Door Wide Open for Republicans on Student Loans, Alan Collinge, Student Loan Justice, Medium. Angry Bear has featured Alan and Student Loan Justice Org. well over a decade now. In the manner they are written, these loans by the Federal Government and maintained by private enterprises are akin to loans made by a hypothetical student loan shark. Loan relief exists for every other loan in this nation. Just not for Students. There are about 54...

What we are seeing in the UK is an example of giving commercial healthcare too much latitude in providing healthcare. Private equity became involved with care for older people and care became chargeable and means-tested, long-stay hospitals were closed. and the government gave over the building of new facilities to private interests. Th US is just starting to experience the growth of mega-healthcare corporations having tenacles in the lowest...

More on the sharp deceleration in YoY house price gains, and the Fed’s chasing the phantom menace  – by New Deal democrat Since there is no big economic news again today, let me fill in a little more detail on house prices through January, reported yesterday, vs. CPI for shelter. Here is the monthly % change for the past 18 months for Owners Equivalent Rent in the CPI (blue), vs. the Case Shiller national index (gold) and the FHFA purchase...

Just finished reading “Black Earth: The Holocaust as history and warning” by Timothy Snyder. It is a detailed account of the Holocaust, as well as an effort to abstract lessons from this history for our time.Like his book “Bloodlands,” Snyder’s “Black Earth” makes for painful reading. As the grandson of a Ukrainian Jew and the son of a Jew, I would have been targeted in the Holocaust had I been in the wrong place. I had read several histories of...

YoY house price gains continue to decline  – by New Deal democrat Today is a travel day so I have to keep this brief.  On a monthly basis for January, prices rose 0.2% as measured by the FHFA house price index. But because that was far less of an increase in January last year, YoY house prices as measured by the FHFA index declined to +5.3%. This implies that by January next year OER as measured in the CPI will only be up about 2.1% – well...

Sanford-Fairview merger is a symptom of a larger problem, MinnPost, Kip Sullivan. Minnesota has a hospital merger problem. But it didn’t begin last fall when Sanford Health and Fairview Health Services announced their intention to merge. It began in the 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s in response to mergers of unprecedented size among health insurance companies. By the early 2000s, Minnesota’s hospital sector had been transformed into a few...