The Angry Bear

Dan here: I received this note from Spencer’s son Matt late afternoon yesterday. Thank you Matt for the note. I knew Spencer as an economist who had a fact-based analysis of industry trends and a direct and clear way of demonstrating and describing a point to the discussion for over a decade. 2011 provides an example. Dean Baker noticed at times. I cannot find Paul Krugman’s mention but here is part of the year 2013. Matt Spencer sent this note about his...

These days, the nation, the world, is faced with the problem of how to distribute wealth, wealth that is being created using less and less labor input? How to distribute the profits from highly capitalized, highly automated, production? Unions, that had been much a part of the solution to the distribution problem in the early 20th century, are becoming more and more irrelevant. A new economic model is desperately needed. Since the dawning of the...

The 2020 Presidential and Senate races: a postmortem Way back in June I started writing nowcasts for the 2020 elections. Here’s what my very first map looked like: And here’s what the last one looked like: When I pushed the “toss-ups”, by lowering the threshold from 3% to 1%, NC, GA, and FL also became “lean Biden” States. Here’s how the election actually turned out, based on results through today (note: Alaska has only counted 50% of its...

Visiting Charlottesville On The Day Biden-Harris Declared Victors Over Trump-Pence  Really, it was not planned with politics in mind.  In Harrisonburg, VA we are an hour drive from Charlottesville, VA, and we have in the past maybe about 2 times every 3 months or so go over there to shop, eat, hang out, etc.  I used to go to UVa to the library or to see people I know, but all that has faded away to nothing over time.  In the pandemic, we have cut it way...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for November 2 – 6 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. With the almost certain election of Joe Biden to the Presidency, we can expect a much more organized and effective Federal response to the pandemic beginning on January 20. If the pandemic is brought under control by spring sometime (and maybe a vaccine becomes available), the ordinary function of the leading economic indicators...

October jobs report: extremely strong monthly gains overall, but at this rate still another 18 months from full jobs recovery HEADLINES: 638,000 million jobs gained. The gains since May total about 55% of the 22.1 million job losses in March and April. The alternate, and more volatile measure in the household report was 2,243,000 jobs gained, which factors into the unemployment and underemployment rates below. U3 unemployment rate declined -1.0% from 7.9%...

Steve Hutkins of Save the Post Office has been live blogging and providing updates to the 12 federal district court cases filed. In the November 6, 2020 Update Steve discusses the delivery updates being filed in court and which are being used by some news outlets to show the USPS has been delivering ballots late and not on Election Day. Steve cautions against the use of this data as actual delivery dates are different than processing dates. November 6,...

Whining Pundits  As I write this the outcome of the presidential election remains uncertain, although the trends seem to be heading steadily in Biden’s favor and it seems very unlikely he will lose, but the hanging on of this is beginning to get to many of us.  Most other races have been decided, although some of those are still up in the air.  In any case, although it is near certain Biden will win, it will be by a substantially lower margin that...

Steve Hutkins on-line live blogging at Save the Post Office has been updating the progress of the “Lawsuits against DeJoy, USPS & Trump with relation to mail delays and election mail. This is the sweep ordered by the court for the USPS to perform to discover and report via the  “sweep of facilities”  how many ballots (were) are being delayed due to the USPS. The twitter link in the Afternoon Update has numerous comments on the delay by the USPS...

Slow pace of improvement in jobless claims continues This week’s new jobless claims were essentially unchanged (but at their pandemic low), while continued claims continued their decline, also to a new pandemic low. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, new jobless claims declined by only 543 to 738,166, just above October 3’s revised pandemic low of 731,249. Seasonally adjusted claims declined by 7,000 to 751,000, a new pandemic low (which was also last...