The Angry Bear

The 2020 Presidential and Senate nowcast: Trump finds his issue Here is my weekly update on the 2020 elections, based on State rather than national polling in the past 30 days, since that directly reflects what is likely to happen in the Electoral College. Remember that polls are really only nowcasts, not forecasts. They are snapshots of the present; there is no guarantee they will be identical or nearly identical in early November. I am afraid I have...

How Big Of a “Hoax” Is That “Dirty Dossier”?  In the wake of the Atlantic story by Jeffrey Goldberg about President Trump reportedly referring to the dead Americans lying in the Aisne-Marne Cemetery near Paris as “losers”  and “suckers,” along with a lot of other embarrassing things for him, Trump has called Goldberg a “slimeball” and that that this report is another “hoax” like “the dirty dossier” of Steele, along with “Russia, Russia, Russia” also being...

Testimony of Retired Postmaster Mark Jamison in law suit against the USPS and DeJoy filed Wednesday, September 2, 2020, Save The Post Office Jones vs Louis DeJoy, Postmaster General of the United States Postal Service and Donald J. Trump, as President of the United States, US District Court, Southern District, New York Plaintiffs’ Memorandum of Law in Support of Their Motion for Preliminary Injunction, US District Court, Southern District, New York...

Testimony of Retired Postmaster Mark Jamison in law suit against the USPS and DeJoy filed Wednesday, September 2, 2020, Save The Post Office Jones vs Louis DeJoy, Postmaster General of the United States Postal Service and Donald J. Trump, as President of the United States, US District Court, Southern District, New York Plaintiffs’ Memorandum of Law in Support of Their Motion for Preliminary Injunction, US District Court, Southern District, New York...

 by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for August 31 – September 4 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Another long leading indicator, corporate profits, are expected to improve substantially in Q3, meaning that yet another forecasting element for the economy one year from now has stopped being a negative. Lots of conditions are in place for growth – but only when the coronavirus is brought under control. As usual,...

The Revolutionary Post Winifred Gallagher, author of How the Post Office Created America: A History, argues that the post office is not simply an inexpensive way to send a letter. The service was designed to unite a bunch of disparate towns and people under one flag, and in doing so, she believes the post office actually created the United States of America. Digital Sight Management, and the Mystery of the Missing Amazon Receipts  Amazon stopped including...

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? That’s easy, First, there had to be a market. Without a market, no matter how good the idea, how well capitalized the enterprise, how competent the management team, or how skilled the workforce; there can be no business. So, where do markets come from? Markets seem to come in three forms. They may be found in plain sight, they may be hidden in a forest of commerce, or they may be foreseen and realized only by...

Coronavirus dashboard for September 2: Trumpism still kills Total US cases: 6,073,840 Cases, 7 day average: 42,304 Total US deaths: 184,604 Deaths, 7 day average: 888 Source: COVID Tracking Project US cases by region: US deaths by region: Superficially, this looks somewhat promising, as both cases and deaths have declined. But note that cases have flattened in the past week or so without further declines. This is particularly of concern, because...

August jobs report: continued slow incremental progress HEADLINES: 1,371,000 million jobs gained. The gains since May total about 48% of the 22.1 million job losses in March and April. The alternate and more volatile measure in the household report was 3,756,000 jobs gained, which factors into the unemployment and underemployment rates below. U3 unemployment rate fell -1.8% from 10.2% to 8.4%, compared with the January low of 3.5%. U6 underemployment...

Initial and continuing claims: very slow “less worse” progress continues The continued good news in this Thursday morning’s jobless claims report is that the trend of “less worse” news is intact. But the improvement has slowed dramatically and is still 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 (slightly) by 7,591 from their pandemic low last week to...