The Angry Bear

Initial and continuing jobless claims: back to being “less awful” This morning’s initial and continued jobless claims resume the trend of “less awful” numbers. New jobless claims fell to under 1,000,000 for the first time on an un-adjusted basis – 984,192, to be specific (gold in the graph below). After seasonal adjustment, they declined 249,000 to a new pandemic low of 1,186,000 (blue), also a new pandemic low: Continuing claims (red, right scale),...

Team Trump on Susan Rice as Biden’s Running Mate Next to Joe Biden, Susan Rice may be the most qualified person to lead our nation back from the utter disaster created by allowing Donald Trump to pretend to be our President. So what is this from the camp of the Liar-in-Chief? Trump’s aides and allies accuse Rice — without delving too deeply into the evidence — of helping cover up crimes for two of the president’s favorite foils, Barack Obama and Hillary...

July jobs report: a very good *relative* gain – perhaps the last HEADLINES: 1,763,000 million jobs gained. Together with the gains of May and June, this makes up about 42% of the 22.1 million job losses in March and April. U3 unemployment rate declined -0.9% from 11.1% to 10.2%, compared with the January low of 3.5%. U6 underemployment rate declined -1.5% from 18.0% to 16.5%, compared with the January low of 6.9%. Those on temporary layoff decreased...

If not the US, who? In order to get it right, it is so important that we know what is going on now. In the midst of a pandemic, overpopulated, ever more marginalized by Global Warming, beggared with inequality, and sorely lacking leadership; the world is indeed going to hell in a handbasket. Take a look: An index of Fragile States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_state#/media/File:Fragile_State_Index_2018.png...

How To Measure Quarterly Changes In GDP Can Make A Big Difference We have had dramatic headlines and commentary in recent days since the BEA issued its initial estimate of quarterly changes in GDP, which they do not officially measure on an shorter time period. This is a measure of the average GDP in one quarter compared to the average GDP in the next quarter.  Looking at Q1 of this year and Q2 of this year, they reported the largest quarterly decline...

The 2020 Presidential and Senate elections nowcast: reverting towards the mean 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. The theme this week is that Trump’s approval is reverting to the mean, and so are the Presidential polls. Here is Nate Silver’s Trump approval vs. disapproval graph: For most of the...

I have no expertise in this field. This post will not be cluttered with links, because I will write from memory and not link to anything. I suppose in a way, this post is a slap in the face of Tom Nichols, who is a subset of the topic, is supposed to be an expert on the topic, and is the author of “The Death of Expertise“. I will attempt to explain how his errors are due to envy and neurosis. Honestly, my trigger was lest nasty (and less based on...

Q2 GDP does not bode well for early 2021 There are two components of quarterly GDP that are long leading indicators, giving us information about the economy 12 months from now. If you think, as I do, that it is likely there will be a new Administration in Washington next year, which will competently follow the science, then there is every reason to believe that by 12 months from now the pandemic will have been contained, and so the long leading...

Or at least think about how you will talk about them in January . . . It now seems likely that Joe Biden will win the presidency, and there is a reasonable chance that Democrats will capture the Senate as well.  If they do get unified control of the government, climate policy will high on their legislative agenda.  What is unclear is whether their approach will include a carbon tax.  This is troubling, because carbon taxes have very substantial economic...