The Angry Bear

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for May 30 – June 3 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The slow drip, drip, drip of decelerating or declining data is continuing, as among other things, the YoY increase in withholding tax payments from workers has declined significantly in the past month. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the virtual moment in what is happening in the economy,...

May jobs report: Like the past few months, I was most interested in three main issues: 1. Is the pace of job growth decelerating?  (Yes, but it is still very strong by historical standards) 2. Is wage growth holding up? Is it accelerating? (It is still strong, but decelerated again slightly) 3. Are the leading indicators in the report beginning to flag? (Not yet) We still have 822,000 jobs, or 0.5% of the total to go to equal the...

After all this time, and even with the benefit of history, the causes of World War One (WWI) are still a matter of discussion amongst scholars. For scholars living then to have understood what the causes were, they would have needed to have known an awful lot about all that was going on at the time; which would have been difficult. They would also have needed to cross the philosophical Rubicon and not have allowed long-held beliefs and norms to...

“The day before a mob of President Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff called the lead Secret Service agent to his West Wing office. The chief of staff, Marc Short, had a message for the agent, Tim Giebels: President trump was going to turn publicly against the vice president, and there could be a security risk to Mr. Pence because of it. VP Mike Pence’s former Chief of staff, Marc...

I have worked with Alan Collinge and Student Loan Justice Org. for at least a decade on student loan bankruptcy. This article was taken from the Tallahassee Democrat. This article has some numbers on who is impacted, which has been presented, and largely ignored here and other places. United States Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) led their colleagues...

April JOLTS report: record low layoffs, still near record high quits and job openings Late last year, I introduced the idea that the jobs market was similar to a game of musical chairs. Employers added or took away chairs, and employees tried to best allocate themselves among the chairs. Because of the pandemic, there have been several million fewer players trying to sit in those chairs, leaving many empty. Additionally, there is 10% greater...

From the Boston Globe comes this opinion piece on part-of-what-is-wrong with the hospital system: “Ask any bedside nurse what the worst part of the job is, and chances are they won’t even mention bodily fluids or patients’ insults. The answer I hear most often is the same as mine: “charting.” Accurate, timely charting of nearly every patient interaction, assessment, and intervention is mandatory. Arguably, it’s the requirement that matters most...

Looks like some of the fun is just starting with Republicans being charged. Hmmmm, Peter Navarro was cuffed, shackled, and taken to the D.C. Federal court and indicted for contempt of Congress. Peter felt he could ignore subpoenas from Congress. He could spend up to 2 years in prison for contempt. Finally, one of the jacka**es at the top led off in cuffs and shackles! “I feel like break dancing.” Naaw, that wouldn’t be kool . . ....

Ways Of Dying  The Economist in each issue has an obituary on its final page. The one for May 21 was of Saotome Katsumoto of Tokyo, Japan, whom I had never heard of who just died at age 90. Apparently, he had been the main person documenting details of the event that involved more people dying at a single time in a single place in world history, although the obit did not specifically point that out.  It did note that the event did involve more...

Let’s take a look at the new month’s first data, on manufacturing and construction. The ISM manufacturing index, and especially its new orders subindex, is an important short leading indicator for the production sector. In May both increased, by 0.7 to 56.1, and by 1.6 to 55.1, respectively. The breakeven point between expansion and contraction is 50, so these both remain solidly positive, if not white hot like they were during last year’s...