The Angry Bear

The Minsky Moment In Eastern Ukraine  Oh, I cannot resist taking that phrase from a recent Economist article about the separatist Donbass republics, the Luhansk Peoples’ Republic (LPR), and the Donetsk Peoples’ Republic (DPR). The official recognition by V.V. Putin of their independence brings about the end of the Minsk II Accord negotiations that have been going on since 2015. These accords were supposed to bring peace to eastern Ukraine, but...

House price increases still strong, but clear deceleration from peak The Case Shiller and FHFA house price indexes were reporting this morning, covering the period through December. As you all know well, my mantra is that interest rates lead sales, and sales in turn lead prices. Here’s this month’s update. The monthly increase in the Case Shiller national index (violet) was 0.92%, and the YoY% increase was 18.3%. This is the 4th month of...

Yesterday we saw that libertarian economist Donald Boudreaux applauds Joe Rogan for uncritically “airing ideas” that undermine confidence in COVID vaccines. Why does Boudreaux approve of this?  Since he is a libertarian, you might think it is because misinformation is liberty, or something.  But no.  He claims that vaccine skepticism is actually reasonable (my bold): The bottom line is that vaccination against Covid is today insisted upon with...

You’re reading the right blog, Presidents‘ Day edition No economic data today due to the Presidents’ Day holiday, so here is something else I ran across over the weekend. Former Federal Reserve Economist Joseph Gagnon critiqued a Paul Krugman column about the cause of inflation. He notes that the causes of this inflation are both supply and demand sided: To which Paul Krugman replied:Yours truly bought into supply chain problems as creating...

RJS, MarketWatch 666, Retail Sales Rose 3.8% in January; Prior Months’ Revisions Boost 4th Quarter GDP Seasonally adjusted retail sales increased 3.8% in January after retail sales for December were revised a bit lower, but November sales were revised somewhat higher…the Advance Retail Sales Report for January (pdf) from the Census Bureau estimated that our seasonally adjusted retail and food services sales totaled $649.8 billion during the...

Libertarian economist Donald Boudreaux began a recent blog post with a quote about the dangers of government censorship, and then offered up this comment:  “Rogan deserves applause for airing ideas about Covid and vaccines that challenge the official “Science.”” Government censorship is dangerous, but this doesn’t mean Rogan should be applauded for credulously (or deliberately) passing on misinformation to his large audience.  Most people...

RJS, MarketWatch 666, Producer Prices Rose 1.0% in January, but Annual Increases are Off the Record Highs The seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 1.0% in January, as average prices for finished wholesale goods rose 1.3% while final demand for services rose 0.7% . . . that increase followed a revised 0.4% increase in December, when average prices for finished wholesale goods fell 0.1%, while margins of final...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for February 14 – 18 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. As the Omicron tsunami recedes, what is still present is high commodity prices (not least of which is gasoline), and mortgage rates at levels that have not been seen in close to 3 years. The overall picture is of an economy that is very slowly decelerating, or worsening, depending on whether you feel...

A housing warning: affordability, at long last, is approaching its housing bubble nadir If current price and mortgage trends hold, we are about 6 to 12 months away from matching the very worst housing affordability at the peak of the housing bubble. Let’s start with a comparison of existing home sales (blue, reported today for January), new home sales (gray), and mortgage rates for the past 16 months:  Note that the NAR doesn’t permit...