The Angry Bear

[embedded content]Trump being asked why he lied to the American People by ABC’s White House correspondent Jonathan Karl About Time!

By all accounts this last Thursday September 11th, Wisconsin was all set to have a smooth election this fall. The state’s 1,850 municipal clerks had printed at least 2.3 million absentee ballots in preparation of another surge in absentee voting (which occurred earlier this year – April) and had already mailed 378,482 of them. They were well under way to meeting the Sept. 17 deadline established by state law when ballots had to be mailed. A deadline by...

The Bahrain-Israel Mutual Recognition  This freshly announced mutual recognition follows the one between the UAE and Israel, which set a new pattern, with Bahrain and possibly others (Oman?) predicted to follow.  I am not surprised it was Bahrain that was next, although it may prove to be the only one.  There are several reasons why it was most likely to be next, and why we might not see Oman join in, although that cannot be ruled out. I see three...

Consumer inflation continues to accelerate YoY, but so far no big problem The consumer price index for August was reported up +0.4% this morning. This is the third straight big increase. Below I show this plus the more stable consumer prices minus gas (red): Here’s what the monthly changes look like over the past 10 years: As you can see, these are at the upper end of monthly inflation increases for the past 10 years. On a YoY basis, however,...

Improvement in initial and continuing claims stalls out This morning’s jobless claims report shows that the trend of “less worse” news has at least temporarily ended, at a level of about 150,000 higher than the worst weekly levels of the Great Recession. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, new jobless claims rose for the second week in a row, by 20,140 to 857,148. After seasonal adjustment (which is far less important than usual at this time), claims...

Working-class Black and Latino Americans, more likely to be paid lower wages, less likely to own significant assets; feel that they are being deprived of a fair share; see this as a consequence of white privilege. Meanwhile, white working-class American’s see themselves as less than privileged, barely hanging on; feel that such demands by Blacks and Latinos amount to a threat to their meager share, their livelihood. Neither group is the other group’s...

Sorry, partisans in denial: swing State polls have tightened It’s a slow economic news week, so let me follow up with some further information about movement in the polls. My usual caution: polls are *NOT* forecasts, just nowcasts estimating what would happen if the election were today. In the past few days, there is further evidence that Trump’s “law and order” message has resonated with at least a small subset of presumably white, probably older,...

CBSNews  Denver officially broke a record with 101 degrees on Saturday7 (Sept. 5) tied a record with 97 degrees on Sunday and came within two degrees of the record with 93 degrees on Sunday. Overall it was one of the hottest Labor Day weekends on record in Colorado. DENVER (KDVR) —  We set two record lows in Denver.  The first occurred Tuesday night (Sept. 8) at 31 degrees.  This ties 1962 for the earliest first freeze on record.  The second record low...

A friend sends a picture of the sky at 9:30 AM in San Francisco CA.  The color matches other pictures I have seen. Picture 1