The Angry Bear

Three most quickly reported measures of coincident indicators – all of which are close to turning negative  – by New Deal democrat While we await tomorrow morning’s deluge of Almost Every Economic Series Imaginable, I have posted over at Seeking Alpha a detailed look at one measure of consumer spending and two of employment which will give us extremely timely warnings as to whether a recession has started. I explain their trajectory in the past...

It has taken a bit of time after Christmas to get back into the swing of things. A week during Christmas while in Breckenridge, I spent it in bed due to Attitude Altitude sickness. One night I was looking at the vertical wood slats on the wall which appeared to be populated with numbers similar to an Excel Spread Sheet. Looking at numbers and doing quick comparisons in manufacturing, distribution, and planning was a good part of my job. I reached for...

Index of leading indicators says recession almost certain; so what of the coincident indicators? – by New Deal democrat This week is one of those where almost all of the important data is crammed into one day – in this case, Thursday, when Q4 GDP, initial claims, real manufacturng and trade sales, durable goods orders, and new home sales will be reported all at once. In the meantime, you may have heard that yesterday the Index of Leading...

Extending Capital to Nature, Reducing Nature to Capital The Biden administration has announced it is inaugurating a program to incorporate the value of natural resources and ecological services into national income accounts.  The New York Times article reporting this development predictably portrays the response as divided between two camps: on the one side are environmentalists, who think this will lead to more informed decision-making, and on...

Open thread Jan. 17, 2022 – Angry Bear, angry bear blog

I am waiting to see what the courts dish out for the insurrectionists who thought it was kind-of-“kool” to attack the Senate and House while in session certifying the 2020 presidential election vote. The insurrectionist sitting at Nancy Pelosi’s desk was sentenced last week. He claimed he was looking for a bathroom. So far, I have not been impressed with the sentences handed down to insurrectionists. I believe the sentencing is too lenient. If we...

Can ChatGPT run a business?  Color me very skeptical. ChatGPT has now successfully passed a Wharton MBA exam. Sure, this isn’t the hardest problem, but to execute it in 1 second is the breakthrough. pic.twitter.com/3W8T7UIV4E— Aaron Levie (@levie) January 22, 2023This is a shockingly easy question, but I would not have predicted that ChatGPT would get it right, given its limited ability to do math and think logically.  So, I am updating my...

How “FHFA-CPI” using house prices rather than OER shows a sharp deceleration in inflation  – by New Deal democrat Paul Krugman made another foray into the “inflation is mostly gone” genre over the weekend with a thread on Mastodon that largely relied on the following graph: concluding that “[A]t this point the burden of proof lies on anyone claiming that we had more than a, well, transitory inflation spike that’s mostly behind us.” I’m...

Recently, The American Prospect‘s David Dayen’s introduced us to a new student loan system. A new program implemented for income driven based repayments (IDR). It requires lesser payback amounts and shorter a time period than the of 25 years to pay back. Unfortunately, a person would still be in their mid-forties if everything works out as planned. No restraints on tuition yet having the freedom to grow. There is a question of whether earlier relief...

Weekly Indicators for January 16 – 20 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat I forgot to post this yesterday, so here you go today . . .  My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. Every now and then you get a contratrend week, when a bunch of metrics move in the opposite direction as the overall recent trend. This past week was just such a week, primarily among financial indicators. As usual, clicking over and reading will...