The Angry Bear

Other things were on the ballot this election also. In Maricopa AZ, Proposition 469 failed. The proposition would have raised the sales tax a half a cent to fund roads in two counties. In the City of Maricopa, the increased half-cent tax passed. In the county (Pinal), it failed. Meanwhile city residents are whining about road conditions, accidents, and drivers. Speed limits, stop signs, and red lights are just a suggestion. A statewide...

October retail sales: consumers: “We’re not dead yet!”  – by New Deal democrat Retail sales, my favorite consumer indicator, was reported this morning for October. And it was a good number, up +1.3% nominally, and up +0.5% after adjusting for inflation: On the bright side, this was the highest absolute number since April. On the down side, retail sales have still gone essentially nowhere for the last 18 months.  As a result, YoY retail...

How hard should the Fed hit the brakes to bring inflation down?  The answer to this question depends, in part, on just how damaging you think inflation is.  And one reason to think that inflation is harmful is simply that most people – normal people, not CEOs or financiers – seem to really dislike it.  If most people think steady inflation of 8% is worse than steady inflation of 2%, that is, in fact, a (non-dispositive) reason to think that 2%...

The Audition Commodity Richard Serra and Carlotta Fay Schoolman produced the video, “Television Delivers People” in 1973. It manifests a critique of television mass media that was subsequently defined by communications scholar, Dallas Smythe as the “audience commodity” but the outline of which had already been presented by him in 1951 in the Quarterly of Film, Radio and Television: The troublesome fact is that under our uneasy...

 – by New Deal democrat I call industrial production the King of Coincident Indicators, because more often than any other metric it coincides with the peaks and troughs of economic activity as determined by the NBER, the official arbiter of recessions. Unlike retail sales, the news this morning for October was not so good. While manufacturing production did increase +0.2% to a new post-pandemic high, overall production declined -0.1% for...

Oregon becomes the first state to make Affordable Healthcare a fundamental right. May 2021, the Oregon Legislature referred the proposed amendment to the voters. Known then as Senate Joint Resolution 12, it passed on a near-party-line vote. Democrats supported it. Republicans opposed it (what-a-surprise). Then-Democrat Betsy Johnson, who was running for governor as an unaffiliated candidate, joining the opposition. Voters were deciding whether...

A friend sent this along, no link: Tags: Family Values

It’s tempting to let your guard down, now that vaccination has reduced the prevalence of COVID, but don’t. Just don’t. Getting it once is a bad idea, even if it doesn’t kill you. And getting it again is worse.“During the past few months, there’s been an air of invincibility among people who have had COVID-19 or their vaccinations and boosters, and especially among people who have had an infection and also received vaccines; some people started...

October producer prices: more evidence that supply chain pressures have eased  – by New Deal democrat Let me start this discussion of October’s producer price index by pointing to the NY Fed’s “Global Supply Chain Pressure Index” for the past 5 years through October: Before Trump’s tariff’s in 2018, most often this index was slightly below zero. It zoomed higher when the pandemic, and with the exception of a few months, stayed there until...

Each week, I go through the reads, I am getting in my In-Box. I would like to think there are some of these articles which might make for an interesting read to Angry Bear readers. They keep pestering me to subscribe. As it is now, many I skim. If it interests me I might take it a bit deeper. I always like to analyze, “what am I going to do with this information? Much of it is a moment in passing and it slips to the back of the pile. Later on, its-I...