The Angry Bear

Initial and continuing jobless claims: 2022 starts out where 2021 left off The labor market in 2022 started out where it left off in 2021, as new claims increased slightly, by 7,000, to 207,000. The 4 week average of new claims increased 4.750 to 204,500: Readings this low haven’t been seen in half a century. Continuing claims for jobless benefits also rose slightly, by 36,000, to 1,754,000: Except for 2018-19, we haven’t seen continuing...

I just read the transcript of Biden’s address on the anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, which has gotten generally favorable reviews.  I thought the speech highlighted an inconsistency in Biden’s approach to politics that has served him poorly.  Biden has emphasized bringing the country together, working with Republicans, and returning the country to “normal”.  This was obviously never going to happen.  Of course, it was possible that the...

Via Brad DeLong: Shadi, this makes zero sense. Liberals made masks, expertise, and science a "cultural identity marker" because it is stark raving insane in a pandemic to adopt any other culture. You seem to be assuming it's normal, somehow, that half our country has entered a mass psychosis– https://t.co/jFdPhPa5qi— Claire Berlinski. (@ClaireBerlinski) December 28, 2021Berlinski understates her case. The notion that liberals claim to “follow...

November JOLTS report: imagine, if you will, a game of musical chairs, New Deal democrat Imagine a game like musical chairs, except that some players are the chairs (employers) as well as people who want to sit in the chairs (potential employees), and players, both sitters and chairs, are continually entering and exiting the game. The game would be in equilibrium if the number of sitters and chairs are always equal. If there are more...

This Life: faith, work, and free time The blurbs on the first few pages of Martin Hägglund’s This Life are so surprisingly accurate that it would be hard to describe the book with an original superlative. “Monumental!” “Powerful!” “Important!” “Electrifying!” “Profound, thoughtful, compelling, and insightful!” Those blurbs were not idle puffery. All that is left for me to add is that I liked it very much. Oh, just one more thing… Hägglund’s...

Agricultual Economist and Farmer Michael Smith, Sherman Act, Part 2: The Small Farmer Pitchfork Army Most are now aware of the Biden Administrations recent announcement and press briefing for a plan to combat prices in the meat industry. If not, you can find a bit of information here:  Readout of President Joe Biden’s Event with Farmers, “Ranchers on his Action Plan for a More Competitive Meat and Poultry Supply Chain“ And you can also see...

To say that the Republican Party since Nixon had pandered to the lowest common denominator isn’t quite accurate, is it? Probably because the term is derived from the arithmetical least common denominator which makes one think of a unique number. Perhaps lowest common denominator was a more polite way of saying that the Republican Party would thenceforth pander to lowbrows, to their basest; to ignorance. Theirs was a war on elites, and, of course,...

Almost everything wrong with the libertarian approach to covid policy has been on display at the Brownstone Institute recently:  misrepresentation of facts, misdirection, revisionist history.  The bad faith is almost beyond belief, except, well, it’s exactly what we have come to expect from the fine libertarians at Brownstone.  The 6 essays I discuss here were published by the Brownstone Institute from December 4 to December 12, 2021.  This post is...

First data releases of 2022 confirm manufacturing strength, construction slowdown The first December data, the forward-looking ISM manufacturing report, has been released. Yesterday construction spending for November was also released. Let’s take a look at both. The ISM index, especially its new orders subindex, is an important short leading indicator for the production sector. In December the index declined from 61.1 to 58.7, as did the...