The Angry Bear

Time was when being able to read and write was good enough to meet the demands of industry. After a while, workers needed to have an eighth grade, then a high school education to be of much value. That was then, back before the world became complicated. Today, in order to understand what is going on at work, workers need a good foundation in mathematics and science, and to be able to read and understand fairly complicated instructions in order to...

I was reading the usual MedPage Today articles. One commenter discusses the State of Florida under Governor DeSantis having a high Covid Death Rate. Fourteen of 15 states favored Trump in the election and have the highest Covid Death Rates. The article: “Florida’s Surgeon General Sends a Dangerous Message” | MedPage Today, Thresia B. Gambon, MD, MBA, MPH March 15, 2022. More on that MedPage Today article later. I will pursue an area which...

Yet another new 50+ year low in continuing jobless claims After 3 days of a data desert, today there is a cornucopia of data: not just initial claims, but housing starts and permits, and industrial production as well. On top of that, a large stretch of the yield curve in the bond market is close to inverting after yesterday’s Fed rate hike. I’ll report on housing and production later; below is the read on new and continuing jobless claims....

Real retail sales for February: not recessionary, but not healthy either Let’s take a look at the February update for one of my favorite indicators, real retail sales. For the past few months, I have suspected that a sharp deceleration beginning with the consumer sector of the economy was more likely than not. At the moment, the verdict on that forecast is mixed. In February, nominal retail sales rose +0.3%. Since consumer inflation rose 0.8%,...

Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink.The very deep did rot: O Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea.About, about, in reel and rout, The death-fires danced at night; The water, like a witch’s oils, Burnt green, and blue and white.And some in dreams assured were, Of the Spirit that plagued us so; Nine fathom deep he had followed...

Real wages for nonsupervisory employees make 19 month low, but no recession signaled Yesterday’s CPI report showed that prices increased 0.8% in February. Meanwhile, the jobs report indicated that average hourly wages for nonsupervisory workers increased 0.3%, so real hourly wages declined -0.5% for the month: As shown in the above graph, real wages had been essentially flat since July 2020, varying from 0.8% above, to -0.3% below. Pending...

Today’s lesson: never simply project the current trend forward An important reason why I am so insistent on dividing data into long leading, short leading, and coincident indicators is in order to avoid the most common pitfall in any forecasting, which is that of projecting the current trend forward. This morning PPI for February was reported. Frequently – but not always! – commodity prices lead producer prices, which in turn lead consumer...

Marx’s “most realistic… most amazing insight!” In his farewell lecture at Brandeis University, “Obsolescence of Socialism,” Herbert Marcuse quoted a passage from the Grundrisse and claimed that in Capital, Marx had “repressed this vision, which now appears as his most realistic, his most amazing insight!” As large-scale industry advances, the creation of real wealth depends increasingly less on the labor time and the quantity of labor expended...

I just finished Robert Service’s biography of Lenin. The “Marxism” of Lenin was not Marxist at all. Classical Marxism holds that capitalism must achieve a high level of industrialization before the workers can overturn the landlords and factory owners and collectivize the fruits of labor for the benefit of workers. Like Mao, Lenin retrofitted socialist revolution to the circumstances. Since Russia at the end of the Romanov dynasty was still a...