The Angry Bear

Where’s The Beef?  Well, as we increasingly understand how environmentally damaging producing beef is, quite aside from lots of other issues, the proper issue should probably be, “nowhere.”  But back in the early 1980s a fast food outlet, Wendy’s (I originally said Arby’s) ran an ad with this line that indicated that the beef was at their outlet while their competitors just did not have the real beef, what all potential customers really wanted. ...

A housing market quandary: two completely contradictory reports on renting vs. ownership There are three potential areas of concern for the economy in the next 12 to 24 months that I see: 1. Inflation – this looks temporary to me. Demand side effects will probably fade by the end of summer, and supply side bottlenecks should fade within the year. 2. Stock price evaluations – I strongly suspect these are near secular highs and are subject...

Why March’s big jump in real retail sales augurs well for big employment gains through summer Yesterday I wrote that the steep decline in new jobless claims in the past 4 weeks likely presages another big monthly employment gain, on the order of 1 million or more jobs. Another very big positive for the next few months in employment is the massive, stimulus-fueled jump in retail sales. As I have pointed out many times, real retail sales (blue...

Tags: open thread

By Steve Roth (originally published at Evonomics)t https://evonomics.com/how-redistribution-makes-america-richer/ You hear a lot about bottom-up and middle-out economics these days, as antidotes to a half-century of “trickle-down” theorizing and rhetoric. You’re even hearing it, prominently, from Joe Biden: [embedded content] They’re compelling ideas: put more wealth and income in the hands of millions, or hundreds of millions, and you’ll see...

March housing permits and starts – don’t get too excited Don’t get too excited about this morning’s big jump in housing starts for March. In the first place, it wasn’t confirmed in either total or single-family permits, which both remain down from December and January, and the latter of which is the least of all housing numbers: Also, the big jump in starts is mainly a rebound from February’s Big Texas Freeze. February and March starts...

Recently, in Windsor, Virginia, United States of America, a local police officer, Police Officer Gutierrez, pulled over Army Second Lieutenant Nazario; ostensibly for the lack of displayed license plate. As it was to turn out, a temporary plate was on display in the vehicle’s rear window. When Lt. Nazario slowly proceeded to a well lighted area in front of a convenience store, pulled over, and stopped, Police Officer Gutierrez, and a second, back up,...

Coronavirus dashboard for April 19: Much great progress, and some problem children As an initial note, there is no significant economic data until Thursday this week, so don’t be surprised if I play hooky for a day or two…. Today let’s take a look at the latest coronavirus information. There’s much progress on the vaccination front. I’ll let the CDC’s numbers speak for themselves: Here’s the information graphically by age group as...

When the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were first approved, it was clear that they were highly effective at preventing covid and that they would be in short supply for months.  The clinical trial data also suggested that, at least in the short-run, one dose of the vaccines would provide almost as much protection against covid as the two-dose protocol that was tested and approved by the FDA.  This led a number of economists and public health...

SCOTUS Is Making New Law in the Shadows April 15th, New York Times “Friday night’s injunction was at the 20th time since the court’s term began last October the justices have issued a shadow docket ruling altering the status quo. Which brings to question, the more substantive the work the justices carry out through such unusual, unsigned, and unexplained orders; the more a “shadow docket” raises concerns about the court’s decision making...