The Angry Bear

How Changes In Changes In Inventories Have Brought US The “Recession” That Is Probably Not A Recession by Barkley Rosser, Econospeak  Based on just announced preliminary results, it looks like the US will have experiences negative GDP growth for the first two quarters of 2022. Based on a “rule of thumb” introduced in a New York Times column in 1974 by then BLS Commissioner, Julius Shishkin, this could be an indicator of a recession happening....

Growing up in Oak Ridge TN in the ‘60s, terms like “homogeneous reactor,” “molten salt reactor” and “breeder reactor” were frequently used, although I couldn’t have explained them at the time. Research into nuclear power became the mission of Oak Ridge National Labs after the war under the direction of Alvin Weinberg. A few years ago, I came across a guy on FB named Charles Barton Jr, an addiction counselor by training and a stalwart advocate for...

Long leading indicators embedded in Q2 GDP suggest a recession is near at hand  – by New Deal democrat Where does the economy go from here?  If it’s not in recession, it isn’t doing much better. There are two components of GDP which are helpful in finding out what lies ahead: real residential fixed investment (housing) and proprietors income (a proxy for business profits). Both of these have long and good track records as helping forecast the...

The conceit of the article on ivermectin by Hooper and Henderson I discussed in my prior post is that medical authorities – mostly the FDA, but also Merck, the maker of ivermectin – are wrongly denying that ivermectin is an effective treatment for COVID.  They raise some issues that are worth discussing.  For example, they talk about the lack of incentive for companies to do clinical trials on existing, off-patent drugs, and about the way FDA...

“Peabody’s Improbable History” Making a short trip in the Wayback Machine to October 2019.   We are going to a right-wing “AMPFests” at one of former president thump’s golf clubs, the National Doral. And we are looking for two trump conspirators having a discussion with one another. One of them has a wire recording device mistaking recoding their conversation. The conversation was captured via a microphone on Roger Stone’s lapel used by a...

Increasing trend in initial claims continues; on track to signal recession in November  – by New Deal democrat Initial jobless claims declined 5,000 to 256,000 last week. But hold your celebrations, because that was because last week’s 251,000 was revised 10,000 higher! The 4 week average rose another 6,250 to 249,250, a nearly 8 month high.  On the positive side, continuing claims declined 25,000 to 1,359,000: Typically, but not always,...

First comments on Q2 GDP: no, we’re not in a recession (yet)  – by New Deal democrat When the negative print on Q1 GDP first came out three months ago, I wrote: “yes, it was a negative GDP print. No, it doesn’t necessarily mean recession…. But the big culprits were non-core items. Personal consumption expenditures, even adjusted for inflation, were positive. The three big negatives were a big decline in exports vs. imports, followed in about...

“What’s in it for me?” they asked. They being the transactional species. “Truth be, nothing,” was the answer. Truth be, there was nothing they nor anyone else could do in their lifetimes that would make it better for them, their kids, or their grandkids. Too late. So, they kept on doing the things that would kill the very thing that had given them everything. There was a time when they believed that this that had given them life and everything...

Jim Hannan brought this issue up in AB comments section. Been too busy trying to get myself healthy again. Just unbelievable. Republicans want to cut out mandatory spending for veterans. This would be another time where politicians have used “veterans in need” to pursue their own political agenda. Vietnam vets saw similar issues. The Bush Administration was also shortchanging Iraq Veterans. And now veterans facing extreme health issues are being...

A 73-year-old woman died of COVID because she got caught up in conspiracy theories and medical misinformation.  NPR has the details: When Stephanie caught COVID-19 just before Thanksgiving of last year, her daughter Laurie suggested that she get help.“She was really not feeling well, and I was like, ‘Just go to the doctor,'” Laurie recalls.But Stephanie, who was 75 at the time, didn’t go. A few years before, she had been sucked into a world of...