The Angry Bear

Steve Hutkins of Save The Post Office critiques the cost-saving measures put into play to-date by PMG Louis DeJoy, the bypassing of the Postal Regulatory Commission which is supposed to review such plans, and the resulting unprecedented mail delays across the country. In conjunction with others, Steve proposes a plan to meet the Covid crisis head-on and lay a foundation for a future Postal Service. In late June of this year, a few days after the new...

Stealing Signs, Econospeak, October 13, 2020 I know this is a widespread and basically trivial matter, but since I had posted earlier about all of the BLM signs on my block (including at our house) accompanied more recently by signs related to the various political races (we have a Senate race, as well as House, and city council here) on the block, where we had some apparently hostile drivebys some while ago. So last night somebody came and stole all the...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for October 12 – 16 at Seeking Alpha  My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. What was most noteworthy about the past week is the confirmation that consumer spending, so far, has continued to hold up even as emergency Congressional assistance has been terminated for a month and a half. As usual, clicking over and reading will bring you up to the moment on all of the important economic data, and will reward...

Why Does MbS Want Hillary Clinton’s Emails?  In yesterday’s Washington Post David Ignatius reports in a column about serious efforts by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) to get the infamous emails of Hillary Clinton publicized, something that President Trump also wants and SecState Pompeo has been promising while complaining about problems getting them out.  My guess is there is nothing in them not already known, but MbS has really been...

[embedded content]Infidel753 introduces us to “Biden’s 22 minutes of speech worth listening to and watching in entirety.” It is interesting on multiple levels. Infidel753 writes for a blog of his own name Infidel753 and also posts commentary from other blogs and Angry Bear on Crooks and Liars. This speech was given on October 6, 2020. I had not heard much about it till Infidel posted it after he read it on Annie Asks You and I saw it on Infidel’s site....

Chris Christie: “I believed when I entered the White House grounds, that I had entered a safe zone, due to the testing that I and many others underwent every day,” Mr. Christie said in the statement. “I was wrong. I was wrong not to wear a mask at the Amy Coney Barrett announcement and I was wrong not to wear a mask at my multiple debate prep sessions with the president and the rest of the team.” So, what should we make of this?  Is it a genuine change of...

Slavery, never gone, had been given new life in Europe with slaves from Africa; first by Portuguese Traders in the 15th Century, then by the Spanish in the 16th. The bubonic plague of the 14th Century had wiped out one-third of Europe’s population; Europe needed laborers. Slavery was widely practiced on the continent and in the colonies until the 19th Century. Sharecropping, but another form of Western European feudalism dug up after having been buried...

Jobless claims: only one week’s data, but cause for significant concern Today marked the biggest increase in new jobless claims in two months, and one of the two biggest increases since May, while the slightly lagging continuing claims continued to decline. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, new jobless claims rose by 76,670 to 885,885. After seasonal adjustment (which is far less important than usual at this time), claims rose by 53,000 to 898,000....

A good discussion of the current state of play is here.  The short version is Speaker Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin are negotiating over a package of $2 trillion or so, McConnell plans to introduce a very limited $500 billion package that he may or may not actually have votes to pass (he may just be giving his members up for re-election a messaging opportunity), and Trump has declared that he wants Pelosi and Mnuchin to go bigger. My take is that...