The Angry Bear

First I should note that at a time when I had totally messed up my life, Larry Summers saved me from well earned unemployment. As my PhD Supervisor, he was amazingly patient about the amazing delays preceding my actually producing anything along the lines of a written document. The title is a reference to a hypothetical dog. an economics professor, Solomon Fabricant, coined the term ”growth recession” to describe a period in which the economy...

MONTHLY CONSTRUCTION SPENDING, APRIL 2021, June 1, 2021Angry Bear Commenter RJS blogs at MarketWatch 666 and presents current economic market information. Estimates the impact of the February and March revisions on the 1st quarter GDP and is estimating the impact of this April report on 2nd quarter GDP (see below past Census reports. ___________________ The Census Bureau’s report on construction spending for April (pdf) estimated that the...

I would watch Elizabeth Warren pummel Jamie Dimon all day. pic.twitter.com/S1XPzMriZf— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) May 26, 2021Elizabeth Warren Slams JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon on Overdraft Fees – Rolling Stone I could watch this over and over. It is similar to when she put the spotlight on John Roberts in the Senate. This is a good take down of Jamie Dimon by Senator Elizabeth Warren. The Senator is relentless. It appears Chase was...

Coronavirus dashboard for June 2: most of US approaches herd immunity threshold; COVID still spreading among the remaining idiots In the past week new COVID-19 cases declined almost 30%, by about 7,000 to 17,289/day; however, deaths actually increased by about 10% to an average of 589/day, mainly due to a data dump by California 5 and 6 days ago – thus I expect a new low in deaths within the next several days: Figure 1 Total deaths are...

by New Deal democrat Comprehensive April housing report: beware the inventory and price boomerang! Now that we have all of the April housing data, my comprehensive look at this long leading sector is up at Seeking Alpha. It’s pretty clear that sales and new construction have peaked in the short term. So, what happens when all of those people who would have put their houses on the market in 2020, but didn’t because of the coronavirus,...

Do Languages Get Simpler When They Get More Complicated?  Oh, a minor diversion from the usual political economy stuff that goes up here.   This is triggered by an article in last week’s The Economist on the nearly dead San language, Nluu.  It has only two living fully fluent speakers alive, both in their 80s.  The San languages are among the world’s most ancient, although arguably reflecting a simpler world than the one we live in, although...

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Needing a new shirt? Pair of pants? Sports jacket? Suit? Log on, get your body profiled, if you haven’t recently; chose material. Screen shows what you would look like in the item while you make changes if any. Place the order and item shows up at your door in 7 days; still untouched by human hands. Prêt à porter? Même chose. Could fly to Albuquerque to see your, or your spouses’, mom and dad. Or, you could avoid the old hassle of the airport, of...

“Revised 1st Quarter GDP Report Still Shows Growth at a 6.4% Rate,” Marketwatch 666, Commenter RJS and analyst The Second Estimate of our 1st Quarter GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis indicated that our real output of goods and services grew at a 6.4% rate in the 1st quarter, unchanged from the 6.4% growth rate reported in the advance estimate last month, as upward revisions to growth of real personal consumption expenditures and to growth...

I think it is now possible to look back on the debate on the effectiveness of non-standard monetary policy at the (near) zero lower bound. I will now “mark my beliefs to market” – J B DeLong. I think it is also a mildly worthwhile exercise, because it is relevant to the current debate about fiscal policy. A key argument for massive fiscal stimulus, well greater than any estimated output gap, is that making predictions, especially about the...