The Angry Bear

Commenter RJS at MARKETWATCH 666 February Durable Goods: New Orders Down 1.1%, Shipments Down 3.5%, Inventories Up 0.7% The Advance Report on Durable Goods Manufacturers’ Shipments, Inventories and Orders for February (pdf) from the Census Bureau reported that the value of the widely watched new orders for manufactured durable goods decreased by $2.9 billion or 1.1 percent to $254.0 billion in February, the first decrease in 10 months, after...

Utopian Socialism Brings About Toilet Paper Shortages Maybe In The Near Future  Yeah, to heck with “socialism” in any of its forms, even old varieties that Marx and Engels denounced, neologizing the label “utopian socialism” for its advocates, even as they made clear their respect for the intentions at least of their intentions, even as they did not provide an analysis of the historical dynamic of capitalism and the broader issues arising from...

Medicaid expansion enrollment grew nearly 30% year-over-year in 19-state sample, Andrew Sprung, XPOSTFACTOID, March 17, 2021 An update on Medicaid expansion enrollment growth since the pandemic struck. Below is a sampling of 19 expansion states through January of this year, and 14 states through February. Maintaining the assumption, explained here, “relatively slow growth in California would push the national total down by about 2.5 percentage...

February personal income and spending decline: the back end of January stimulus payments Last month I wrote that the:“report on January personal income and spending shows just how important the stimulus packages enacted by the federal government both last spring and last month have been to sustaining the economy.”The truth of that was confirmed on the back end in this morning’s report for February, in which January’s 10% increase in income was...

Virginia Ends The Death Penalty  Yesterday (or maybe the day before), Virginia Governor Ralph Northam overturned over 400 years of a death penalty. My state had the highest number of executions of any other, 1390, over those 400+ years. And now it is done. Good. “Lawmakers in the Democratic-controlled House of Delegates and state Senate passed identical bills last month that would end death sentences and executions. There are two men on death...

February personal income and spending decline: the back end of January stimulus payments by New Deal democrat Last month I wrote that the:“report on January personal income and spending shows just how important the stimulus packages enacted by the federal government both last spring and last month have been to sustaining the economy.”The truth of that was confirmed on the back end in this morning’s report for February, in which January’s 10%...

Steve Hutkins at Save The Post Office continues with the documentation of issues and occurrences at the USPO. Steve presents a good take-down of what DeJoy’s plan is going forward. He is predicting a 3.6% increase on top of a CPI increase. There are two alternatives being presented, the Base case and the “Delivering for America” Case. The “Delivering for America” Case uses the new rate authority to make its calculations (Figure 35, p. 51). It...

“Yesterday, Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia signed a 95-page law designed to suppress the vote in the state where voters chose two Democratic senators in 2020, making it possible for Democrats to enact their agenda.” I am not sure the election of two Democrats to the Senate was the objective of the voters in Georgia. It is more the result of voters flexing their muscle and stating, Repubs had better start to pay attention to the constituency,...

Tags: open thread

Hey Gentlemen,Wanted to give you a heads up that we are upgrading our server hardware to increase performance on our websites tomorrow night (Friday, 3/26) at 7pm CST.This maintenance will likely result in an extended outage while the hardware is upgraded, which could last up to 2 hours. We are scheduling the upgrade at 7pm CST to minimize impact as much as possible.Thank you for your patience and have a wonderful weekend! Just a heads up....