The Angry Bear

It is unusual for Prof. Heather Cox Richarson to have posted last night. The good Prof. of History typically rests on the weekend. Further down this post, you can read her latest. Just a bit more of my comments, some news, and then Prof. Heather. It appears the wheels of a global political and historical change are turning in a direction which “may” impact us for years to come. Global leader, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has managed to...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for February 21 – 25 at Seeking Alpha My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has added some elevated risk to a few of the numbers, but there is nothing that indicates any economic crisis. In general, there are accumulating signs that last year’s Boom is over; but on the other hand, no accumulating signs that a recession is anywhere near. In short, a...

Will Kyiv Become Like Aleppo?  There are reports that many Russian soldiers are lacking in morale for the invasion of Ukraine. They were told repeatedly like the rest of us that there would be no invasion. The Ukrainians are very similar, and most of them know Putin has exaggerated the things they have supposedly done or not done wrong.  And rather than welcoming them as liberators and throwing down their arms to surrender, the Ukrainians have...

War Comes to Kyiv | The New Yorker, Joshua Yaffa Interesting article that showed up in my inbox. This is a copy and paste ot it with minor editing. If you follow the link, there are other short articles to be read. I believe the takeaway from this article is the courage of Zelensky. The Ukraine will fall apart without him. Can the Russians be this bad militarily? The road into Kyiv is lined with military checkpoints, many of which are manned by...

RJS, Focus on Fracking, SPR at a 19 year low: total oil + products supplies, including SPR, at a 7 3/4 year low, distillate supplies at 26 month low Overall oil inventories finally rose after a million+ barrel per day jump in oil imports; commercial crude supplies saw their biggest increase since October 10th after pulling ~350k barrels per day out of the SPR, i.e. switching the deck chairs on the Titanic . . . other trends remained in...

One micron is about ten gold leaves thick. The gilded age, one. Since, and yet, there are those who would return the nation to that time. To their minds, it was the best of times; that all that need be done was rid the nation of the odious Progressive and New Deal Era laws that in fact had had nothing to do with the age’s demise, and the labor unions that formed up during the period; then let the laws of capitalism and of free markets take their...

New home sales increasing trend continues – for now; expect a major pullback in coming months With mortgage rates having risen sharply (as of this morning Mortgage News Daily has the 30-year rate up to 4.19%, the highest in nearly three years), we are at an important moment for the housing market. In that context, let’s look at this morning’s new home sales report for January. There are two important things to know about new home sales: (1) it...

Coronavirus dashboard for February 23: the Omicron wave has receded by almost 90%; what about deaths? No economic data today (Feb. 23), so let’s update the situation with COVID-19. My usual source of graphs, 91-Divoc, is down today, so less elaborate, cluttered graphs from the NYT site to follow. The Omicron wave peaked in the US on January 14, at a 7 day average of 806,928. As of yesterday, the average was 86,553, an 89% decline! But before...

Every week my mailbox fills up with articles. Some of which I subscribe too and pay for and others which are freebies. The freebies are slowly disappearing. The first article is an old one and has been on AB before and discussed by Maggie Mahar. Atul asks if healthcare is a right. Maggie and Shadowfax (an ER doctor) would argue it is more a moral obligation. That discussion can be found here: Is Health Care a Right? – The Health Care Blog. Further on...