The Angry Bear

New home sales continue to fall sharply, while prices for both new and existing homes continues to increase sharply New home sales declined further in June to 590,000 annualized and May was revised sharply lower as well: This was the lowest number since the pandemic lockdown month of April 2020, and before that since December 2018. It is also over 40% lower than the peak reading of 1.036 sales annualized in August 2020. This is absolutely...

“Who got rich off the student debt crisis?” – Reveal (revealnews.org), James B. Steele and Lance Williams A bit of a story of how we got to this student loan debt debacle. It is long, tedious, and not exciting. And this is only part of it. In 2016, 42 million people were owing $1.3 trillion in student debt. It is or was a profit center for Wall Street and also the government. I suspect Wall Street still gets its cut from student loans. Their...

Book notes on Reconstruction No economic news of note today, and as usual insufficient Covid reporting over the weekend to make an update of that worthwhile, so let me dig out something from the back burner that I wanted to do for myself. Last year I read Eric Foner’s 600+ page tome on Reconstruction, and this year read a treatment of “Lincoln and the Fight for Peace,” which described his final days and to the extent available his coalescing...

Former President Donald Trump’s lost support from both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post. An editorial by each paper on Saturday called trump unfit(?) to hold office again (?). The New York Post delivered a “crushing” blow to trump’s hopes to run for re-election again in 2024. Over the weekend, both of the Rupert Murdoch-owned papers came down hard on the former president. after the most recent House Select Committee hearing...

“The Grain Deal,” Econospeak by Barkley Rosser Finally we have something sort of hopeful happen in the war in Ukraine that might help alleviate problems it has generated for much of the world.  A deal has been struck to allow Ukrainian grain to be exported from Odesa and two smaller ports near it across the Black Sea and out into the Mediterranean to world markets.  With something like 20 tons of grain, mostly wheat, sitting there for some...

Weekly Indicators for July 18 – 22 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat I wasn’t able to get to this link yesterday, but my Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The situation with the leading indicators continues to ever so slowly deteriorate. But there is some good news as well, as gas prices continued to decline precipitously from their peak. As usual, clicking over and reading should be educational for you, and slightly...

I was provoked to write the post immediately below by this shocking article which suggests possible fraud. I feel the need to comment on this passage “Yet Aβ still dominates research and drug development. NIH spent about $1.6 billion on projects that mention amyloids in this fiscal year, about half its overall Alzheimer’s funding. Scientists who advance other potential Alzheimer’s causes, such as immune dysfunction or inflammation, complain...

Sorry I will not provide links. Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha (TNF alpha) is an inflamatory peptide hormone. A soluble protein which is based on part of the receptor for TNF alpha is used to treat arthritis. It has been noted from health insurance records that this treatment is associated with a much reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease. One important aspect of Alzheimer’s is the formation of placques (clumps) of a peptide called amyloid beta....

Coronavirus dashboard for July 22: the BA.4&5 wavette has (probably) peaked  – by New Deal democrat No economic news today, so let’s update the COVID situation. As of yesterday, nationwide (dotted line below) cases declined slightly to 123,000. Cases have been slightly elevated from their previous 100-110,000 range for several weeks, but appear to have peaked. Deaths (sold line) rose slightly to 429, and are roughly 100 above their...