The Angry Bear

Nobody is getting laid off: the continuing saga  Initial claims declined another 1,000 this week to 268,000, and the 4 week average declined 5,250 to 272,750, both – yet again – new pandemic lows: For the past 50 years, initial claims have only been at these levels for 2 months at the peak of the late 1990’s tech boom, and from late 2015 to just before the pandemic in 2020.’ Continuing claims also declined 129,000 to a new pandemic low...

The Rittenhouse Verdict and the Future of Vigilante Violence There are typically two levels in a case like Rittenhouse’s, the individual issues of justice and accountability, and the social implications of the crime and its judicial resolution.  I want to spend a moment with the second. America faces an impending crisis of vigilante suppression of democratic rights.  In the past year we’ve seen militias openly threatening violence in takeovers...

Coronavirus dashboard: As the winter wave takes hold, how much will resistance from prior infections hold numbers down? Europe and North America, the winter wave is underway. While vaccinations clearly work, in most countries of the West there is a reservoir of defiant anti-vaxxers, who are not going to get vaccinated unless they are absolutely forced to. What does that mean for the present, immediate, and longer term future of endemic COVID?...

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for November 15 – 19 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. From time to time here, I put up a post including “you’re reading the right blog” in the title.  This week was similar at Seeking Alpha. In the past week or so, there have been a number of articles in the mainstream financial media about how the shipping bottleneck is at least beginning to ease, and gas and oil...

Blogger RJS, MarketWatch 666 and Focus on Fracking, Global Oil Shortage at 1,930,000 barrels per day in October as OPEC’s output falls 588,000 barrels per day short of quota OPEC’s October Oil Market Report Thursday of this week saw the release of OPEC’s November Oil Market Report, which includes OPEC & global oil data for October, and hence it gives us a picture of the global oil supply & demand situation for the third month after...

Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA. Blogger RJS, Market Watch and Focus on Fracking Gasoline supplies at a 48 month low, distillate supplies at a 19 month low; total inventories of oil and all its products at a 79 month low US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending November 12th showed that a big jump in our oil exports and a modest decrease in our oil production meant we had to pull oll...

 . . And Industrial Production isn’t too shabby, either Industrial production, the King of Coincident Indicators, was reported for October this morning in addition to real retail sales, discussed already in my last post. – and it was also quite positive. Total production increased 1.6% during the month, and manufacturing production increased 1.3%. This was the biggest monthly increase for total production since March of this year, and...

Repeated Lying About Lying  Of course, Donald Trump has been using this Big Lie method of simply endlessly repeating a Big Lie and successfully so with his claim that last year’s presidential election was “rigged” or “stolen,” according to the latest poll I just saw on the order of 70% of Republicans accepting this Big Lie. But this practice seems to be spreading for yet more degeneration happening as figures who have not done this like Trump...

“Letters From An American,” November 18, 2021; Professor Heather Cox – Richardson Today began with Republican leadership doubling down on its support for Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ), whom the House censured yesterday for tweeting a cartoon video of himself killing a Democratic colleague, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and attacking the president, Joe Biden. Only two Republicans voted with the Democrats in favor of the censure. Former...

Cheap trips to the lakes We are experiencing climate change with a vengeance in British Columbia. For the past four summers, we have had horrific wildfires that send smoke all the way from the interior to the west coast of Vancouver Island. Last summer, we had a record-breaking “heat dome” that killed over 600 people and, after registering all-time heat records for several days, the town of Lytton burned to the ground.  Currently, our third...