The Angry Bear

I am sitting here in Arizona in Pinal County. Pinal County is a small and rapidly growing county. The small city I live-in is growing with leaps and bounds. Builders are adding homes with a rapidity I have never seen before. Or at least they were till recently. Mortgage rates, greedy builder’s prices, and the supply chain have caused the market to slow. The pricing of our home jumped $10,000 a week after we bought it. I had already locked in a...

“Postal workers and allies to protest DeJoy’s Ten-Year Plan at BOG meeting, Save the Post Office, Steve Hutkins I missed this announcement at Steve Hutkins “Save The Post Office” blog. Apparently a large number of US Post Office supporters went to the Governor’s meeting and expressed their opinion on Postmaster Louis DeJoy’s plan to centralize sorting away from the neighborhood post offices. In effect, this action places a much larger burden on...

Real average hourly wages and real aggregate payrolls for October  – by New Deal democrat With yesterday’s report on October consumer prices, we can take up two of my favorite measures of how the working/middle class is doing – real average non-supervisory wages, and real aggregate payrolls. Real average wages for non-supervisory workers declined -0.1% for the month. They are -5% below their pandemic lockdown peak (which, recall, was...

October CPI report: total inflation increasing at 3.5% annual rate, core inflation minus shelter increasing at 2.8% annual rate in the past 4 months  – by New Deal democrat For a full year now I’ve been hammering the fact that the official CPI measure of housing inflation, “owners’ equivalent rent,” seriously lags actual house prices as measured by the most popular housing indexes. I said then, and I have reiterated almost every month since,...

I lived in Michigan for 27 years having moved from Madison Wisconsin. If I had my choice, we would have stayed in Madison. It was damn cold in the winter. We were still able to do things though. Michigan was not quite the same. It was never really home for us. Just too many things not right. The politics were deeply Republican in our county. The roads were in poor to fair condition, taxes were too low, and the county favored business. Voting...

Jobless claims: still holding steady  – by New Deal democrat Initial jobless claims rose slightly, by 7,000, from one week ago to 225,000. The 4 week average declined -250 to 218,750. Continuing claims also rose slightly, by 6,000, to 1,493,000: This is right in the middle of where claims have been for the last 6 months. If anything, there might be a slight rising trend in the last month. The jobs market remains very tight. Aside from...

“Open thread Nov. 8, 2022 Election Day,” Angry Bear, angry bear blog.

Coronavirus dashboard for November 8: the new alphabet soup of variants fails to generate a new wave (so far)  – by New Deal democrat Biobot has not updated since late last week, showing COVID particles at or near 6 month lows both nationwide: and in all 4 Census regions: As expected, the CDC’s variant update last Friday showed that BA.5 was down to 40% of all cases, with the alphabet soup of new variants descended from BA.2 and BA.5...

“U.S.A. the Envy of World After Ten Billion Dollars in Campaign Ads Changes Almost Nothing,” The New Yorker, Andy Borowitz. Three questions in a row commentary. Were you convinced? Did you wonder about who was trying to influence the election the most? Which ones, Republicans, Democrats, Polling firms, TV News, Magazines, News Papers, the masked militia at the polling boxes, trump??? UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (The Borowitz Report) – The...

“November 9, 2022,” Letters from an American, Prof. Heather Cox Richardson, (substack.com) Yesterday was a good day for democracy. Americans turned out to defend our principles from those who denied our right to choose our own leaders. There was little violence, the election appears to have gone smoothly, and there are few claims of “fraud.” As I write tonight, control of the House and Senate is still not clear, but some outlines are now...