The Angry Bear

I assume/hope there’s a non-scary answer to this question, but I don’t have time to figure it out, so I’ll just throw it out here . . . From the NYT today: How can cases and deaths have declined by the same amount since January, given that older and more vulnerable people have been disproportionately vaccinated? Has the infection fatality rate risen among the young? Is this just an artifact of timing, lags, and maybe the choice of start...

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for May 17 – 21 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The theme of a supply-constrained economic Boom continues, with the addition this past week of the national average of gas prices going over $3 a gallon for the first time since 2014, probably in part to the Colonial Pipeline snafu. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you right up to date on the state of...

Oil exports drop by the most on record to least since October 2018; global oil shortage at 1.73 million barrels per day, Focus on Fracking, RJS The “global oil shortage” is from my coverage of the May OPEC report, which i’ll paste below; I also revise global oil shortage/surplus estimates for prior months. I don’t know of anyone else who digs this stuff out of this report (a 100 page report is more than most journos can handle)… OPEC’s Monthly...

Big decline in new jobless claims continues, while decline in continuing claims has stalled New jobless claims continue to be the most important weekly economic datapoint, as increasing numbers of vaccinated people and outdoor activities have led to an abatement of the pandemic – both new infections and deaths are near their lowest points in a year.  We have hit my objective for new claims to be under 500,000 by Memorial Day. My second...

Further considerations on the disappointing April jobs report. Consider the averages! I’ve been threatening for a couple of weeks to run some extended comments on the big miss in the April jobs report. As there’s no economic news of note today, here goes . . . . 1. It’s possible March was the outlier rather than April. The original report for March was that 916,000 jobs were added. In this month’s report it was revised down to 770,000....

for once . . . [embedded content] Good 10 minute dialogue by Al Franken

‘Cut the Bullsh*t‘ and Tax Rich People Like Us, Common Dreams, Kenny Stancil Monday is Tax Day in the United States this year and the Patriotic Millionaires—rich Americans who advocate for greater redistribution of wealth and power to working people in the U.S.—are using the occasion to launch “an offensive” against the “selfish billionaires, Wall Street tycoons, and CEOs” who are trying to undermine progressive tax reforms that would require the...

April housing permits and starts: a pullback from peak, but no recessionary signal UPDATED The monthly statistics on housing permits and starts, reported this morning, were mixed, as permits increased slightly and starts declined: The less volatile single-family permits also declined slightly. On the one hand, a high level of construction activity is continuing. But the three-month moving average of both single-family and total...

How should we grade our collective response to the covid pandemic?  What lessons should we draw for the future?  I believe that our response was poor.  To see why, just imagine where we would be today if effective vaccines had not been developed.  Our current strategy of moderate social distancing, intermittent partial lockdowns, and economic assistance for businesses and the unemployed would not have been sustainable for another 1 or 2 years as...