The Angry Bear

Originally published at Benzinga Biden The Master Oil Trader Part III? President Refills Emergency Stash as Crude Price Slides – United States Oil Fund, Benzinga, Aaron Bry, Editor. ~~~~~~~~ The Biden administration has been slowly replenishing stocks in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) as oil prices fell in the fourth quarter, buying crude at prices that could rate the president as an oil trading legend. The SPR is an emergency...

U.S. winning world economic war, axios.com, Neil Irwin. The United States economy grew faster than any other large, advanced economy last year, by a wide margin, and is on track to do so again in 2024. Why it matters: America’s outperformance is rooted in its distinctive structural strengths, policy choices, and some luck. It reflects a fundamental resilience in the world’s largest economy that is easy to overlook amid the nation’s...

Last September, Kennedy—who has lambasted social media platforms’ attempts to contain his fact-free rants about vaccines as unforgivable infringements on free expression—brought suit in New Hampshire to squelch a blogger who posted anonymously on the Daily Kos website about a speech that the late Sen. Robert Kennedy’s son delivered in Berlin to a group called Querdenken. “Free Speech Lover RFK Jr. Loses Bid to Punish Online Critic,” Daily Beast,...

January jobs report: A very strong report, but with pockets of significant weakness  – by New Deal democrat As per usual, the Establishment and Household portions of the jobs report gave somewhat different impressions, complicated by annual revisions to each. In general, not only was January excellent of the Establishment report, but most months in the past year were revised upward as well. The Household report mainly was “meh,” neither...

This is taken from a more detailed and longer write-up on alternatives to lithium-ion batteries. It has been edited and comments have been added. Sometimes when you write a long piece, people just quit reading halfway through it. My point here is to get people to read what is out there and where we are with alternative power sources beside gasoline driven motors. We are still a long way away from having a long term and suitable replacement for...

New month’s data starts out with leading indicators in both manufacturing and construction indicating expansion  – by New Deal democrat As usual, the new month’s data starts out with information on manufacturing and construction. The ISM manufacturing index has been a good leading indicator in that sector for 75 years. The difference over time, especially the last 20 years, is that manufacturing makes up a smaller share of the total US...

We are into the fourth year of Biden’s first term as President and some are finally beginning to realize that maybe, just maybe what Joe did was mostly correct. Yeah sure, there were some things he got wrong. However, he did lead us through one of the worst economic calamities the nation has survived, a pandemic. Democrats in Congress did help. In 2008, Obama had two years of Democrat support which went away in 2010. Recognized Biden’s efforts...

Continuing claims near 2+ year high; likely the effect of Silicon Valley layoffs  – by New Deal democrat Initial claims rose by 9,000 to a three month high of 224,000 last week. The four-week moving average also rose 5,350 to 207,750. With the usual one-week lag, however, continuing claims rose sharply, by 70,000, to 1.898 million, close to a 2+ year high: On the more important YoY% change basis, initial claims were up 12.6%, while the...

A comment on median vs. mean, and job-stratified wage growth  – by New Deal democrat Before today’s avalanche of data, I wanted to comment briefly on the Employment Cost Index for Q4 that was reported yesterday. This index has the advantage of weighting for type of employment. If low wage workers gain a disproportionate number of jobs, that will tend to hold down *average* wages. But the ECI hold the weighting of low, medium, and high wage...

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