The Angry Bear

The housing market’s downward turn begins: new home sales in February, plus a comment about affordability As of this morning Mortgage News Daily shows the 30 year mortgage rate up to 4.72%, 1.9% higher than their lows 15 months ago, and the highest in four years. That means the housing market is in some serious trouble. Let’s take a look at that via this morning’s new home sales report for January. First, a reminder, that new home sales:...

Keisha Russell Must be Censured for her Plagiarized Senate Testimony Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. — Voltaire Keisha Russell is a propagandist for the “First Liberty Institute” who they grace with the title of “counsel.” It looks from her resume that the counsel she provides consists of appearing on right-wing cable news and doing speaking engagements. Her bio at First Liberty doesn’t mention...

Sorry for the Advertisement. This is funny . . . or at least it was too me . . . a former BBall player. [embedded content] The Rest of the Story Sue Bird Lied That Celtics Legend Larry Bird Was Her Uncle As a Kid (insider.com) Tags: Basketball Great Sue Bird ...

The US Treasury yield curve is on the verge of inverting My graphing issue hasn’t resolved yet. Fortunately there is no big new economic news today, and there is something I’ve been following with particular interest in the past week that doesn’t require any graphing: namely, the Treasury bond yield curve is on the verge of inverting. Normally, we should expect to see increasing yields the longer the maturity. This is pretty simple stuff: if I...

Org-Dimensional Man In 1959, Harold Rosenberg wrote the essay “The Orgamerican Phantasy,” published in The Tradition of the New. Rosenberg’s essay criticized the “post-radical” self-absorption of several of the same authors — William H. Whyte, C. Wright Mills, and Vance Packard — that Herbert Marcuse would subsequently praise in the Introduction to One-Dimensional Man for the “vital importance” of their work. In Vance Packard and American Social...

Why War Might Go On Longer  An unfortunate reason the current war in Ukraine might go on longer than it should (with the should here being that it should never have happened in the first place, and the sooner it stops the better, with the onus here clearly on V.V. Putin to stop it as he started it without any justification), is that wartime leaders get a puff in their popularity at least for awhile and are let off the hook on domestic problems. ...

So says Martin Kulldorff: Surprising choice of @ashishkjha as @JoeBiden's new Covid coordinator. Not only was he wrong promoting lockdowns, school closures and vaccine passports, he mischaracterized and bullied other scientists by calling them "clowns". A clown would do a better job as Covid coordinator. https://t.co/E3kJQ1mkh6— Martin Kulldorff (@MartinKulldorff) March 22, 2022It seems like Jha did call Kulldorff a clown.  (Kulldorff was an...

January 2021 finds 14.5 million people having healthcare plans due to Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act. As commenter “Arne” pointed out, this represents an increase of ~2.98 million more people insured under the ACA. Even the other Joe voted for it. Manchin that is. Kind of catching up with old news here. Earlier this year mid- January (some states end enrollment at the end of January), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)...

RJS, MarketWatch 666 Retail Sales Rose 0.3 % in February After January’s Sales were Revised 1.0% Higher Seasonally adjusted retail sales increased 0.3% in February after retail sales for January were revised 1.0% higher . . . the Advance Retail Sales Report for February (above) from the Census Bureau estimated our seasonally adjusted retail and food services sales totaled $658.1 billion during the month, which was 0.3 percent (±0.5%)*...