The Angry Bear

Construction Spending Rose 0.8% in July after 2nd Quarter Spending was Revised Higher, RJS, MarketWatch 666 The Census Bureau report on construction spending for July (pdf) estimated that the month’s seasonally adjusted construction spending would work out to $1,568.8 billion annually if extrapolated over an entire year, which was 0.3 percent (±1.2 percent)* above the revised annualized estimate of $1,563.4 billion of construction spending in June...

Analytical Bias The world is made up of systems.  Our body is a system, or in fact a system of systems.  What we call “society” is another system of systems, as is the natural environment.  And all these meta-systems are themselves elements in even more encompassing systems that interconnect them.   But these systems are very complex, difficult to explain or predict.  One successful strategy, which has had a revolutionary impact on how we live,...

August jobs report: some weak points, but the underlying very good trend continues While the NBER has declared that the recession ended in April 2020, neither the King nor Queen of Coincident Indicators, industrial production, and jobs, have recovered to their pre-pandemic levels. The former is only off by -0.2%, but the latter – which is most important to ordinary Americans – as of this morning’s report is still -3.5% below its level in...

Why Hospitals and Health Insurers Didn’t Want You to See Their Prices – The New York Times (nytimes.com) Sarah Kliff and Josh Katz Some Background Tipping the balance to single payer? I believe Kliff and Tucker article in the NYT Times on hospitals and insurance helps to tip the balance. It is revealing to see what different hospitals will charge for the same procedure and what various insurance companies will payout to cover the same...

by Dale Coberly Condorcet and Malthusian essay relevant to Social Security and the problem of too much kindness [note, important sentences in the following are quoted from another author because it’s easier for me to write that way.  Credit will be given at the end of the article.] Goetzman: “In 1794 as the Reign of Terror raged the Marquis de Condorcet penned one of the most optimistic tracts of the eighteenth century.  He wrote...

This is thorough coverage of the background leading up to Roe v. Wade and today’s events with a SCOTUS majority of five shrugging its shoulders ignoring the impact of the Texas law on one state and its meaning to a nation. September 2, 2021, Letters From An American, History Prof. Heather Cox Richardson examines “the contrast between image and reality in American politics.” In the light of day today, the political fallout from Texas’s...

“Kavanaugh Helps Gut Roe, Critics Recount All the Times Susan Collins Said He Wouldn’t,” Common Dreams, Jake Johnson I am stealing this from Common Dreams. Senator (sigh) Susan Collins has done this on numerous times in the past and pulls the football away, again when Dems get ready to kick it. She knows she is wrong each time and does not want to take party guff for making a decision worth something besides just going along. “The Republican...

Producer sector remains on fire, while two most important indicators of consumer sector falter As has been the pattern for the last several months, August data started out with a strong reading on manufacturing, while July ended with weak data on housing construction. As a side note, the latest read on motor vehicle sales also slid south.  Both the overall and new orders components of the ISM manufacturing index remained very strong, with...

Jobless claims show continuing improvement, now well within normal expansion range Way back at the beginning of spring, I set a goal of initial claims being 400,000 or less by Labor Day as a marker for a good COVID recovery – which I was reminded of because the aforesaid holiday is this weekend. Well, we blew through that a while ago, and at this point, all of the jobless claims markers are well within the range of a normal expansion. This...