The Angry Bear

The plight of independent truckers There were quite a few TV shows out there which gave trucking a romantic style of life to live. It was a lot of hard work and not quite like what was portrayed in shows like “Cannonball” or “Movin On.” Just crossing Nebraska would put you to sleep and Cannonball did not have a truck sleeper. There is a lot of danger involved with being on the roads with trucks other than having them stop and change a tire...

Does economic growth cause unemployment?, Econospeak, Sandwichman, October 24 Usually, a question in the title of an article is a teaser and the answer is almost always “no.” Not in this case. The standard argument is that economic growth is necessary to create jobs and that unemployment results from the slowing or interruption of growth. Even advocates of degrowth or a steady-state economy assume a positive connection between growth and...

Wealth is leisure. Leisure, wealth. The three quotes above are from, respectively: 1. William Godwin 2. Charles Wentworth Dilke 3. Karl Marx. There was a very pronounced influence of Godwin on Dilke and of Dilke on Marx (hence indirectly of Godwin on Marx). My research suggests that viewing Marx’s work from the perspective of Dilke’s major influence reveals both hidden strengths and weaknesses in Marx’s critique of political economy.  The...

No Covid-19d-19 Here Or in North Korea: Turkmenistan Yes, Turkmenistan is among the few nations on the planet claiming to have not had a single case of Covid-19, along with the DPRK, aka “North Korea.”  The October 16 Economist reports, after noting the arrest of Nurgeldi Halykov, who reported that the British ambassador got it, who was, of course, arrested: “Social-media networks and news websites are blocked. Police surveil mobile phones that...

This commentary by Professor Heather caught my eye this morning. Interesting findings in the Letter today.. Letters From An American, October 23, 2021, Professor Heather Cox – Richardson There are three stories in the news today that seem to me to add up to a larger picture. First is the story of money laundering, which seems suddenly to be all over the news. Today we learned that federal prosecutors in Detroit have broken into a massive...

 Median prices for existing homes is probably at peak; expect inventory to continue to increase Existing home sales were reported yesterday for September, up 7% month over month on a seasonally adjusted basis. While they are about 90% of the market, they are much less important for the economic cycle than are new home sales, which will be reported next week. I suspect new home sales will increase, since interest rates stabilized at very low...

Joel Eissenberg, Ph.D., Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology I got the Moderna vaccine as part of the phase III clinical trial back in August and September 2020. Although it was technically a blinded trial, I knew from my symptoms after the second shot I was in the vaccine arm and not the placebo arm of the clinical trial. Nevertheless, I got myself tested for the spike antibody and confirmed it. Indeed, the levels were over eight...

Jobless claims show renewed downward trend; still some slack in continued claims Jobless claims declined 6,000 this week to 290,000, yet another pandemic low. The 4 week average also declined 15,250 to 319,750, also another pandemic low: With the exception of the last few years of the last expansion, this level of weekly initial claims would be very low for any point in the last 50 years, and the 4 week average would be average for late in...

Coronavirus dashboard for October 20: as the Delta downtrend slows, is any State closing in on “herd immunity”? It’s been a moment since my last dashboard. That’s primarily because the Columbus Day weekend resulted in anomalies for the past 9 days, that have finally mainly but not completely resolved. Here’s a look at the past 6 months for both cases and deaths per 100,000: As of today, cases are finally down more than 50% from the...