The Angry Bear

Coronavirus dashboard for June 2: the US has settled into a depressing status quo – by New Deal democrat The US seems to have settled into a status quo where it accepts 20,000 new coronavirus infections and 1,500 deaths each day. This is what I forecast about a month ago, as lockdown regimens were abandoned in much if not most of the country: periods of waxing and waning waves of infection because there simply isn’t the political or social willpower to...

Coronavirus dashboard for May 31: comparing US States and regions with European countries – by New Deal democrat Among all countries in the world, Sweden has the worst death rate from coronavirus: 5.9 per million per day over the past week. But, even with massive declines from their peaks, most of the States in the US’s eastern megalopolis are worse. To begin, here’s Kevin Drum’s dashboard of major European countries, plus Canada, as of May 27: He...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for May 24 – 28 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.The news can be summed up in two words: “less awful.” With the exception of one employment measure, every other indicator has bounced off their recent lows, some very substantially. Meanwhile lower interest rates are setting the stage for growth after the pandemic effects ebb. As usual, clicking over and reading helps reward me with a...

Ironies Of Minneapolis In 1944 the Minnesota Democratic Party united with the Farmer-Labor Party to form the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota, one of the most progressive state branches of the US Democratic Party.  In 1948 its mayor of Minneapolis, Hubert H. Humphrey introduced at the national convention the resolution supporting civil rights for African-Americans whose acceptance led to a walkout by Strom Thurmond and other Dixiecrats, with...

by Joseph Joyce Is There a Future for FDI?—Update The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which recently reported on foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2019, has released a new study on the impact of the pandemic on future FDI. The OECD points out notes that FDI flows before the pandemic have been on a downward trend since 2015, and FDI flows in 2018 and 2019 were lower than any years since 2010, suggesting that the decline in...

by Ken Melvin 3rd World — It didn’t happen overnight. The nightly news, when talking about the effect of the pandemic on the populace in, say, Southeast Asian, African, South American, … countries, invariably refer to the tenuous hold on life of their working poor; they don’t really have a job. Each day they rise and go forth looking for work that pays enough that they and their family can continue to subsist. It is, in some countries, a long-standing...

Meanwhile, As Minneapolis Burns So now we are all focused on the recent horrific murder in Minneapolis and now the subsequent events that are happening in many parts of the nation, with Minneapolis the epicenter.  This is serious, and I have an idea how it will end.  This has even distracted us from the usual pandemic and economic issues, which are historically serious. But while all this has been going on, just in the past week or so our president has...

April personal income and spending: considering the extreme circumstances, a good report April personal income and spending, reported this morning, showed the impact of both the lock downs and the stimulus that was passed by the Congress. To cut to the chase, spending in real inflation-adjusted terms declined -13% (red), while real income rose 11%(blue): Unlike the recent jobs report, this is not a byproduct of the layoffs that were concentrated in...

Death And The Pandemic Economy The relation between death and the pandemic economy is a fraught one that has become hotly debated, although with not much clear empirical evidence.  I note that recently over on Econbrowser Menzie Chinn has had a series of posts on this matter in various forms.  Obviously a big issue has been the claim by the anti-lockdown crowd that not reopening the economy quickly will lead to an increase in suicides by the...