The Angry Bear

Between the Russian invasion of Ukraine and COVID outbreaks in China, it certainly seems likely that supply shortfalls and upward pressure on prices will continue.  This raises difficult questions about politics and economic policy. On the political side of the ledger, I think that President Biden’s strategy should be predicated on continued inflation; if inflation subsides people will be happy and he will benefit politically no matter what he...

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for March 21 – 25 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The walls closed in a little more on the long leading forecast this week, as now real money supply is beginning to falter. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you thoroughly up to date, and will reward me a little bit for giving you a heads up as to what awaits, economically, in the future....

Coronavirus dashboard for March 28: I’ll take the “under” for the severity of any BA.2 wave Very few US States reported over the weekend. The decline in new cases has stalled at roughly 30,000 per day. Deaths are still declining, and are currently just below 800 per day. Since the BA.2 variant continues to generate new headlines, with just about everybody warning of a new wave in the US, let’s take a look at what actually happened in Europe...

I. Kant, even [embedded content] The grinning mug on the right of the YouTube Fox News screen above is Allen C. Guelzo, a historian of the Civil War and biographer of Abraham Lincoln. Guelzo is also a purveyor of a bizarre theory that Immanuel Kant was the progenitor of critical theory, critical race theory, Marxism, Jim Crow, and “every dictatorship in-between”: But critical race theory may also be the most irresponsible way to think...

Outside of agriculture there is a feeling of vast quantities, that farmers produce too much corn, soybeans, cotton, and other monocrops in a habitat destroying, bee killing, rural, backward, government sponsored enterprise that is slowly adding to climate change and environmental destruction. Agriculture is largely reactionary and heavily influenced by capitalism. If the need is there, and the price is right, the crop will be produced. One of the...

RJS, Focus on Fracking, US oil supplies are at a 13½ year low, but oil exports are at a 8 month high; SPR at a 19½ year low after biggest draw since Aug 2011, gasoline exports at a 39 month  high; distillate supplies at a 95 month low, total oil + products supplies at a 95 month low after across the board drawdowns. The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the...

“We’re Running Up the Wrong Side of the Escalator” | MedPage Today, Shikha Jain, MD, March 23, 2022 It is Women’s History Month in March and something I fatally did not know until this morning when I pulled this article up in my inbox. My daughter is a teaching nurse in Colorado and has run into similar issues with pay, status, etc. I am not going to edit this column as it to reflects issues which my daughter has faced (also) including aggression....

An update on the yield curve This is an update on my yield curve post from earlier this week.As had happened in the previous few days, the 3 to 5 year Treasury yield spread, which was inverted intraday, un-inverted by the close of the trading day. Here is what the US Treasury yield curve looked like yesterday: As you can see, it is kinked at the 7 and 20 year maturities. Aside from that, from Fed funds out through 30 years it has a more...

Biden has done a pretty good job managing the world reaction to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.  But speaking in Poland, Biden declared that Putin cannot remain in power.  This comes on top of his earlier declaration that Putin is a war criminal.  From WAPO: White House officials were adamant the remark was not a sign of a policy change, but they did concede it was just the latest example of Biden’s penchant for stumbling off...