The Angry Bear

Jobless claims join other data series inching in the direction of yellow caution territory – by New Deal democrat Ever since jobless claims started higher in May, I’ve cautioned that I suspected that unresolved seasonality may be at play. We are now at the point where claims were at their low points for all last summer. In other words, last week through next weeks are the acid test for that hypothesis. Last week the news was good. This week it...

by Tom Walker Econospeak Book proposal: Marx’s Fetters and the Realm of Freedom: a remedial reading — part 2.3  Inversion Marx stated repeatedly in the Grundrisse that capital inverts the relationship between necessary and superfluous labour time. Capital both creates disposable time and expropriates it in the form of surplus value, reversing the nature-imposed priority of necessity before superfluity and making the performance of...

Tonight: Put on your seatbelts, watch your wallets, bring your parachute, and join us (substack.com) Just click on the link above to have access. And the timing?Friends, In just a few hours, Donald Trump — convicted felon, twice-impeached former president, denier of the results of the 2020 election, instigator of an attempted coup — will take the stage at the Republican National Convention and give his nomination acceptance speech. Will...

It has been a while since I have commented on anything ACA related. This popped up in my in-box. I follow Andrew Sprung for the technical side of it. xpostfactoid’s Andrew and Charles Gaba at ACASignups are my go-to people on ACA healthcare and healthcare. To answer this question . . . how can it be half of all enrollees are eligible for free benchmark Silver ACA Coverage? One only has to look as far as joe Biden’s March 2021 American Rescue Plan...

Industrial and manufacturing production close to 10 year+ highs in June  – by New Deal democrat If the news in housing construction the other morning was cautionary, the news on manufacturing and industrial production was very good. Manufacturing production (red in the graph below) rose 0.4% in June, and is only 0.2% below its post-pandemic high in October 2022. It is also only 1.2% below its highest level since the Great Recession, which...

GOP Pretends as usual By Robert Reich Substack The Republican Party began its national convention last night, with a bow to . . . (wait for it) . . . organized labor. Or Unions. You read that correctly. A few days ago, the Republican National Committee sent out an email with this remarkably ironic headline: “RNC STATEMENT ON FAILED BIDEN’S ANTI-UNION, PRO-CHINA POLICIES” This was followed by an even more absurd RNC statement:...

By Alyssa Lukpat WSJ AB: Wondering what NBC News is afraid of with Morning Joe. The hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” said they were disappointed NBC News pulled the show off the air on Monday in the wake of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Joe Scarborough, one of the hosts, said NBC told them on Sunday night it wanted to air one breaking news feed on all its channels, so their show wouldn’t broadcast Monday. He said NBC diverted...

One motivation to getting my genome sequenced was to see whether I had known risk alleles for dementia (spoiler alert: I don’t). My dad was diagnosed with frontotemporal lobe dementia a few years before he died. His brain biopsy after death returned a diagnosis of Alzheimers. He might have had both.One of the known risk alleles is ApoE4. Homozygosity for ApoE4 is a strong predictor of Alzheimers by the eighth decade. I knew I wasn’t homozygous for...

General Motors Receives $500M Federal Grant to Electrify Lansing Grand River Plant by R.J. King DBusiness Magazine AB: Plant conversions from building gasoline and diesel driven vehicles to EVs. A timely move even if the newer models will require need modifications in later years. General Motors Co. today announced it has received a $500 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to assist in preparing its Lansing Grand River plant...

Housing permits and starts stabilize, but construction comes close to generating yellow recession caution signal  – by New Deal democrat There was good news and bad news in this morning’s report on housing permits, starts, and construction. The good news is that both permits and starts stabilized after last month’s initially reported multi-year lows. The bad news is that single family permits declined further, and even worse the metric best...