The Angry Bear

New jobless claims increase: exit Delta, enter supply chain chokepoints? This week jobless claims were higher for the third week in a row, and the 4-week average also rose slightly. Initial claims rose 11,000 to 362,000, and the 4-week average rose 4,250 to 340,000, from last week’s pandemic low: Meanwhile, continuing claims declined 18,000 to 2,802,000, but remain above the pandemic low of 2,715,000 of two weeks ago: It appears...

The Open Access Movement In Academic Publishing I apologize that I look like someone voting for 3.5 and then sometime later saying that they only support 1.5, but I am not interested now in discussing that matter.  So, here I go. 1) I support Open Access in academic journal publications. 2) OTOH I grant that commercial publishers of academic journals should be able to demand payment for people accessing articles fully available in their...

Real spending increases, real income declines in August (Note: I’ll report separately on construction spending and the ISM manufacturing index later.) Real personal income and spending held up well throughout the pandemic, due to a vigorous government response. This morning these were reported for the last full month of any assistance. In nominal terms, personal income rose 0.2%, and spending rose 0.8% (but with a downward revision of -0.4%...

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for September 27 – October 1 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Commodity prices and transportation costs continue to soar, and there are even signs of further acceleration. If you go by the regional Fed reports, it is beginning to affect manufacturing. If you go by the ISM, not even a little bit. As usual, clicking over and reading brings you up to the economic...

House prices continue to surge. But maybe . . . Both the FHFA and Case-Shiller house price indexes for July were released this morning. Both showed a continued surge in house prices, with one difference that may be of importance. First, here are both indexes normed to 100 as of January 1991, when the FHFA index began: Both are currently within 2% of an identical 250% increase since then. Further, YoY gains in both continued to...

I don’t know why I’m writing about this when our democracy is on fire.  Maybe I need to focus on something cheery, like climate change. The American Prospect has a couple of pieces up on insurance and climate change.  One identifies a genuine issue, the other misses the mark. In this piece, Alexander Sammon asks why insurance companies aren’t taking steps to fight climate change, given that catastrophes like wildfires and hurricanes cost...

Blogger and Commenter RJS Briefly: even though US Covid infections have been falling since labor day, there’s been anecdotal evidence it’s rising among school age kids . . . at the same time, there are now solid studies showing that the mRNA vaccines administered in the US are losing their effectiveness . . . hence, it looks likely that about the time the holidays roll around, many of those infected kids will be mingling with their vaccinated...

Prof. Joel Eissenberg has a new post up considering people’s immunity to Covid and what it consists of after vaccination. COVID vaccine immunity is waning — how much does that matter? (nature.com), September 17, 2021, Elie Dolgin, We can say circulating antibodies do matter for protection from COVID-19. With the innate immune response, they represent the frontline response in a viral challenge. Often forgotten in the durable immunity...

Always on the back burner, since 2015 on the front, the battle for most ignorant state is being fought across America; well, across a lot of America. If full-scale war should break out, for the most part, the competing armies will not have far to go.