The Angry Bear

Two sharply contrasting reports on the economy to start September We got two contrasting views of the economy this morning. (Tuesday) First, the good news: residential construction spending increased in July. Below I show it in comparison with single family permits: Typically construction follows permits. In the past few years, it has been almost coincident with permits. This is more good news for the important and leading housing sector, indicating...

Figure 1 Via mashable: Alaska’s exceptional summer continues. The most rapidly changing state in the U.S. has no sea ice within some 150 miles of its shores, according to high-resolution sea ice analysis from the National Weather Service. The big picture is clear: After an Arctic summer with well above-average temperatures, warmer seas, and a historic July heat wave, sea ice has vanished in Alaskan waters. “Alaska waters are ice free,” said Rick Thoman, a...

Voters who are paying a lot of attention to the race are much more to support Elisabeth Warren than voters who are paying little or no attention. It is also true that voters who are paying a lot of attention are more likely to support Joe Biden than Elisabeth Warren. Finally, Voters who are paying a lot of attention are somewhat less likely to support Bernie Sanders than are voters who are paying little or none. If you don’t see an image cut and pasted...

Does O’Rourke Have The Trade Strategy For Dems Against Trump? I have been posting here periodically on how it seems that the Dems do not seem to have a strong or well-defined position about Trump’s trade wars that seem politically effective or even coherent.  The few candidates who have made noise about essentially returning to Obama’s policy, e.g. Hickenlooper, have done so poorly they are dropping out or at least not in the 10 making the next debate...

The Hurricane/Picture of Dorian Gray: A Perfect Moral Storm in Three Texts Andreas Malm, Fossil Capital: The temporal aspect is particularly striking,’ writes philosopher Stephen Gardiner, who has done perhaps more than anyone to foreground it, in A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change: it catches us in a bind. Given that global warming is ‘seriously backloaded’ (every moment experiencing a higher temperature posted from the past)...

As of the second quarter the year over year percent change in real GDP is 2.3%.  Virtually everyone refers to this as strong. Why?  By historic standards 2.3% real GDP growth is subpar. It is below the long term growth rate of the economy using virtually any widely accepted estimate of trend or potential growth. Many republicans actually claim that the potential growth rate is now 4%. If so, it would only make Trump’s 2%-3% growth look worse. In 1967,...

I was doing my usual reading in the internet world and ran across this comment to another commenter who claimed Labor Day is a made up holiday. A lot of history in this reply: “‘A made-up holiday that never had a great basis for its existence?’ How about the Ludlow Massacre where 57 miners were killed by Rockefeller guards that set fire to miners tents even though they were on private property? Their union leader was held by two militia members and shot...

Here is an especially self indulgent post. I think the useful part is this link to a Data For Progress poll showing current US public opinion is way to the left of the inside the beltway Overton Window. Most US adults support proposals which are seen as fringe left in official Washington. The presentation is verbose. A good write up by Eric Levitz is here This is interesting and raises the question of how a Congress which totally disagrees with a...

by New Deal democrat Weekly indicators for August 26 – 30 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.One of the benefits(?) of the discipline of a mechanical forecasting system is that it can be completely dissonant with what your emotions are telling you.  Right now the discipline of my long/short leading/coincident indicator system is completely at odds with the dominant DOOOM based on the yield curve inversion. Because, while the...