The Angry Bear

Income, spending, layoffs, and new home sales all point to a continuing expansion in 2022 We got our last batch of data before Christmas this morning. Almost all of the news was positive. I will be very brief.In the “coincident indicators” department, real personal income declined -0.2%, while real personal consumption expenditures increased less than 0.1%, although both remain well above their pre-pandemic levels:  Comparing real personal...

Professor Joel Eissenberg, Biochemistry & Molecular Biology While vaccination reduces the probability of new variants; sadly, there are selfish citizens among us who refuse to be vaccinated for COVID-19. Their belief in a decision only affecting themselves. This belief is false. Failing to get vaccinated increases the chances of infecting others and of hosting a more dangerous variant. The latest data I’ve seen shows that even though...

It’s A Wonderful Life: Faux Populism  Somewhere I never saw a full version of this classic, Its a Wonderful Life, but here it is on Christmas Eve, an official Christmas classic. I was always suspicious of it, from all I had heard, but it looks less worth than I had heard. I mean, really, local bank owner gets into real estate problems? And the well-intentioned owner is somehow some great hero? He is offered total control of local monopolies. Heck,...

Voters in West Virginia Support the Build Back Better Agenda, Senior Analyst, Ethan Winter, Data for Progress, August 27, 2021 From August 20, to August 27; Data for Progress organization “conducted a survey of 348 likely voters in West Virginia” to discover whether there was voter support for Biden’s Build Back Better bill. As you know, Senator Joe Manchin has claimed he has to go back to West Virginia and explain it to its voters....

Photo by Ian Keefe on UnsplashFrank Cross: “It’s Christmas Eve! It’s . . . it’s the one night of the year when we all act a little nicer, we . . . we . . . we smile a little easier, we . . . w-w-we . . . we . . . we cheer a little more. For a couple of hours out of the whole year, we are the people that we always hoped we would be!” Bill Murray “Scrooged“ Dan and Bill ...

The conversation started with my investment person about two particulars which I was curious as to what he was expecting in returns. Those two were losing somewhat over the last 5 months. Excitedly, he started off on how the Fed was going to rein in inflation. I listened and answered. However you do it, raising rates is not going to fix the infrastructure for supply chain, much less JIT, and the processes of increasing supply. In 2008, we had...

Jay Bhattacharya is one of the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which called for the immediate elimination of all lockdowns and “focused protection” of the vulnerable.  Yesterday Bhattacharya tweeted this: On second thought, I would rather be ruled by people who think the earth is flat than by people who are blind to trade offs in pandemic policy. The latter are likely to do far harm. Spherical earthers with a wise approach to...

If Barkley is writing about it, it warrants space on AB. RIP Sharon L. O’Hare, Econospeak, Barley Rosser I know, I know, my part of this blog is increasingly resembling an obituary column. But, heck, people I know who are conneted to econ keep dying, although this one was not as well known as others. Sharon Lyn O’Hare was a former student of mine 40 years ago at James Madison University, and while she never finished her PhD at Boston...

Record 9.6% Annual Increase in November Producer Price Index; Record 6.9% YoY Increase in Core Prices; Record 7.1% YoY Increase for Final Demand Services, Record 14.9% Increase for Final Demand Goods, and a 46+ year Record for Prices of Intermediate Goods, RJS, MarketWatch 666 The seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 0.8% in November, as prices for finished wholesale goods rose 1.2% while margins of final services...