The Angry Bear

Weekly Indicators for July 11 – 15 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. We are at the point where I suspect that after the Q2 quarterly economic reports come out, and the Fed’s next meeting/rate hike, literally *all* of the long leading indicators will be negative. But, wait! There is a ray of sunshine still. Oil prices went back down under $100/barrel yesterday, equivalent to where...

Just How Bad Is Biden’s Trip To Saudi Arabia?, Econospeak by Barkley Rosser  Yes, I posted on this awhile ago, but at that time it was a maybe. Now he is in the air on his way, although, of course, to Israel and the West Bank first, where I have no complaint or comment much. So, basically what I said earlier largely holds, that this is not a trip with much good likely to come out of it. Main “goods”?: affirmation of in-place cease-fire in...

June industrial production: second sharp monthly decline in manufacturing  – by New Deal democrat Industrial production declined -0.2% in June, and May was revised downward to unchanged. Even worse, manufacturing production declined -0.5% in June, and May was revised downward to -0.5% as well: This corresponds to the sharp deterioration in the regional Fed new orders indexes, and the ISM manufacturing new orders index we have seen during...

(Dan here…lifted from David Zetland’s One-Handed Economist newsletter are some interesting links on climate change…and we need to consider the US heat dome as well as Great Britain and European heat waves) Climate chaos (sorry for all the links, but shit’s getting out of control) Read: Researchers now estimate that humans cannot “tolerate” (=not die) wet-bulb temperatures above 31C (87F @100% humidity), which is much lower than the widely used...

Jobless claims continue to trend higher, but no recession signal yet  – by New Deal democrat Initial jobless claims rose 9,000 to 244,000 last week, a 7.5 month high. The 4 week average rose 3,250 to 235,750, a 7 month high.  But the news wasn’t all negative, as continuing claims declined 41,000 to 1,331,000, which is only 25,000 above their 50 year low set on May 21: Two weeks ago I noted that reviewing the entire 50+ year history of...

Wikipedia offers an excellent synopsis of Regulatory Capture. In her book, Media Capture, Anya Schiffrin does so for Media Capture. In 1971, soon-to-be Associate Justice Lewis Powell Jr., then a corporate lawyer, wrote a memorandum to his friend Eugene B. Sydnor, Jr., Chair of the Education Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce titled Attack On American Free Enterprise System. To his mind, the status quo, which he called The American Free...

June CPI report: bad, bad, bad, bad, bad  – by New Deal democrat In case for some reason you haven’t already heard, the inflation news for June was uniformly bad. Here is some of the carnage. For the month of June only:   overall inflation was up 1.3%, the highest monthly increase since 2005  energy inflation was up 7.5%  inflation less energy was up 0.7%  inflation in used cars and trucks was up 1.6%  inflation in rents was up 0.8%, the...

A well-deserved death for an ill-conceived plan for veterans. The 2018 VA MISSION Act was to help shape the future of veterans’ health care delivery by creating the Asset and Infrastructure Review (AIR) Commission. The modernization as planned by Trump was to be accomplished by downsizing VA hospitals and clinics with the goal of privatizing the VA’s healthcare services. Instead of following President Biden’s attempt at bipartisan support, both...

“Peatlands cover only a small fraction of the Earth’s surface (3%), yet store more than 15%–30% of terrestrial carbon (C) stocks” One of the terrible tipping points is oxidation of Peat due to warming (another is release of methane from melting tundra). But one key question is why didn’t the carbon in peat turn to methane? I think the reason is that methanogens can’t handle low pH and that a combination of waste and acid promotes takeover by...