The Angry Bear

Negative Nov. and Dec. revisions overwhelm positive January retail sales The initial spin on this morning’s delayed retail sales report for January has been positive, with for example the Wall Street Journal calling it a “rebound” and “a sign of solid economic momentum in the first quarter. Ummmmm, No. Both nominally and in real terms, retails sales did improve by +0.2% in January over December. The problem is, both November and December were revised...

Via Brad Delong comes two pedictions FROM 2008/09 from our current economist in the White House here. Larry Kudlow (December 7, 2007): Bush Boom Continues: “There’s no recession coming. The pessimistas were wrong. It’s not going to happen. At a bare minimum, we are looking at Goldilocks 2.0. (And that’s a minimum). Goldilocks is alive and well. The Bush boom is alive and well. It’s finishing up its sixth consecutive year with more to come. Yes, it’s still...

What’s New About Fake News? The apparently falling standards for what people are willing to believe in seems to be the topic of the day.  We have immense, well-capitalized media outlets like Fox News just making stuff up, crazy conspiracies on the internet, a refusal to accept scientific expertise on matters, like climate change, where it is as well established as it’s ever been.  What’s up with all this? I was provoked into thinking about this by...

A modest proposal to use FICA-style tax withholding as a transition to “Medicare for All” Probably the foremost reform advanced by the Democratic Party at present is “Medicare for All.” Personally I don’t particularly care whether it is ultimately necessary to have single payer (like Canada) or universal coverage (like France or Germany) or a hybrid of each (like Australia). I am fond of the Japanese saying that translates as “There are many paths to the...

In parts of Livingston and Oakland counties, the people have been warned not to eat the fish from the Huron River and Kent, Strawberry, Zukey, Gallagher, Loon, Whitewood, Base Line and Portage lakes as well as Hubbell Pond due to the fish being contaminated with PFAS and similar chemicals coming from industries. In 2016, Michigan started to tell people about the impact of PFAS and how dangerous the PFAS and PFOAs are. PFAS/PFOA are part of a class of...

Click on the picture to get a great, detailed view of these magnificent and architecturally significant structures. Claude Scales’s Photo of the day: there is a lot of Brooklyn Heights literary history in this photo. The poet W.H. Auden lived in the top floor apartment of the brownstone row house at One Montague Terrace, nearest the corner of Montague Street and Montague Terrace, in the winter of 1940-41 when he wrote his “New Year Letter.” If you go to...

February jobs report: the first sign of the economic slowdown spreading to jobs? HEADLINES: +20,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate -0.2% from 4.0% to 3.8% U6 underemployment rate  -0.8% from 8.1% to 7.3% (NEW 20 YEAR LOW) Here are the headlines on wages and the broader measures of underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, but Want a Job Now: down -32,000 from 5.254 million to 5.222 million Part time for economic reasons: down...

“Legal observers were surprised by the relatively light, 47-month sentence received Thursday by President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was convicted in August on charges of tax and bank fraud. The 69-year-old, who appeared in the court in Virginia in a wheelchair and pleaded for compassion, could have been sentenced to up to 24 years in federal prison. With time served, Thursday’s sentence means Manafort could spend a little more...

“The Pentagon is planning to tap $1 billion in leftover funds from military pay and pension accounts to help President Donald Trump pay for his long-sought border wall, a top Senate Democrat said Thursday. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-IL ‘It’s coming out of military pay and pensions. $1 billion. That’s the plan. The funds are available because Army recruitment is down and a voluntary early military retirement program is being underutilized.’ The development comes...

This Friday, watch out for an outright decline in temporary employment Almost a month ago I flagged the decelerating staffing index, and showed how it corresponded with the leading sector of temporary jobs in the monthly jobs report: the Staffing Index isn’t seasonally adjusted, [so] you really have to compare each on a YoY basis. And while the two don’t turn positive or negative at the same time or for the same duration, they do correlate well on YoY...