The Angry Bear

On Golden Idols  IN Exodus it is reported that while Moses spent time on Mount Sinai receiving the Ten Commandments from Yahweh, the people of Israel down below got tired of waiting for him and so constructed at least one, maybe more than one, as silver is mentioned along with gold, statue to be worshipped, with the golden idol, usually claimed to be of a calf, the most notorious.  When Moses returned with the Commandments he was wroth with anger...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for February 22 – 26 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. After months of virtually no changes in any of the time frames, suddenly there is activity in all of them. Some of it: – is short term noise due to the disaster in Texas, some – is related to the pace and effects of vaccination availability against COVID-19, and – some of it is the resulting change in long...

A very few of us now living lived through The Great Depression; only a very few more of us lived through WWII; some more than that of us lived through the Korean War; more yet of us lived through the Vietnam Era; and so it goes up until now. All of us now living may have thought of the possibility of seeing another war, pestilence, the disaster of Climate Change, … , may have even thought of the possibility of experiencing a pandemic; but who amongst...

January personal income and spending show how important government stimulus has been to keeping the economy afloat This morning’s 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.After adjusting for inflation both personal income and spending rose in January, by +9.7% and +2.0%, respectively: The...

Steve Hutkins at Save The Post Office continues his dialogue on planned changes to USPS operations with one change amongst the others resulting in later deliveries of first class mail. The Washington Post was the first to report on this change as well as other changes. You may be able to catch portions of Louis DeJoy’s planned changes at other sources as well. Congressional Action: The House Committee on Oversight and Reform has just posted...

New home sales rise m/m, but signal caution for housing market going forward New home sales increased to a three month annualized high of 923,000 in January. This is of a piece with the positive news last week on housing permits. At the same time, the pace remains below the recent high of 979,000 annualized set six months ago in July. The below graph compares housing starts (blue) with the much less volatile single family permits (red) and the...

With all the crap, trump has said in tweeting over 4 years which equates to > 20,000 tweets  via “Wiki,” I find it to be infantile and a double standard for Manchin, Collins, and Romney to call Neera Tandern out for her tweets. Where were they over the last 4 years of trump, hiding from him perhaps? Joe Manchin has a bone to pick with Neera Tanden And its personal. The background; “Office of Management and Budget director nominee Neera...

Initial jobless claims: it appears that the worst of the winter 2020-21 increase is behind us Let me start off this week’s review of initial jobless claims by pre-debunking something I am sure is going to be said elsewhere: a lack of reporting in Texas did *not* appreciably skew this week’s numbers. Applying the same workaround I did for Hurricanes Sandy and Harvey, I.e., subtracting the affected State’s data from the unadjusted number, to see how...

Tags: open thread

Steve Hutkins at Save the Post Office Continued discussions between the mailers who are faced with higher rates, PMG Louis DeJoy, and Congress. The mailers are in court as we read Steve’s excellent review of what is taking place. Also, PMG DeJoy has plans of increased prices for mailers also includes slower service and higher prices for First Class mail. The February 12th edition of the Washington Post exposed the PMG plans to...