The Angry Bear

Here you go! Save the Post Office is edited and administered by Steve Hutkins, a literature professor who teaches “place studies” at the Gallatin School of New York University. Prof. Hutkins (Steve) is the author of this commentary. (Angry Bear Blog has had a long relationship with both authors Steve Hutkins and Mark Jamison both of whom author the “Save The Post Office Blog.”) Everyone knows the mailing has been slowing down. News reports are filled with...

Real personal income, spending, and consumer sentiment for July July personal income and spending were reported this morning. Since real personal income drives one important election model, I have been waiting to see if July would reflect the end of the emergency Congressional assistance. It didn’t. Real personal income rose less than 0.1% in July. While it is down by -6% from April, it is up a huge 7.1% from July 2019. Real disposable and Per Capita...

by New Deal democrat Weekly indicators for August 24 – 28 at Seeking Alpha  My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The economy as a whole is being driven by lower interest rates, unprecedented Fed supply of new money, stock market gains, and – through July – the Congressional emergency stimulus and unemployment benefits. This is still showing up in all indicator timeframes. It took a few weeks for the effects of the pandemic lockdowns to show...

Jobless claims slowly continue to get “less worse,” while longer term deadweight loss builds The good news in this morning’s jobless claims report is that the trend of “less worse” news continues. The bad news is that the improvement has slowed to a snail’s pace, at levels worse than the worst levels of the Great Recession. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, new jobless claims declined by 68,038 to 889,549, a new pandemic low. After seasonal adjustment...

More evidence that housing has roared back This morning we got the final important July housing reports: new home sales and house prices. New single home sales are very volatile and heavily revised, so it is always wise to take the initial report with a grain of salt. On the other hand, it is the most leading of all the reports. With that caveat, this morning’s report of 901,000 sales annualized is the highest reading since December 2006! It is also in...

Some Interesting stuff from the One handed Economist David Zetland. The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free A continuing conversation on the lack of diversity in economics An AI explains human intelligence Tech firms are worth so much because they have monopoly power? A good interview with Kate Raworth on Doughnut economics. She talks about “change” but doesn’t usually explain the tools (besides “be nice”) but those are discussed here. Jason Hickel...

Kevin Drum argues that he is: One of the key questions raised by Donald Trump’s 2016 victory has been whether he represents a new turn in American politics or merely a blip who will be quickly forgotten if he loses in 2020. Over the past four years I’ve spent a lot of time reviewing the evidence about this, and the conclusion I’ve come to is pretty simple: Trump is a blip. Let’s back up a bit. For a very long time Democrats have believed that demographics...

More on the bifurcation between the booming stock market and the bust of an economy  I wrote that new stock market highs in the face of the worst US economic downturn since the Great Depression were primarily a function of a few stocks that are particularly tied to the global economy rather than tethered to the US; that those stocks also benefited from delivering online content or physical stuff to homebound consumers; and that the background long...

Remembering The Bombing Of Sterling Hall A Half Century Ago  A half-century ago at 3:42 AM on Monday, August 24, 1970, the New Year’s Gang set off an ammonium nitrate bomb in the back of a Ford pickup truck next to Sterling Hall on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.  They were aiming it at the Army Mathematics Research Center, then directed by my later father, J. Barkley Rosser [Sr.]. However, they were notoriously the Gang That Could Not Bomb...