The Angry Bear

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for June 15 – 19 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha.Almost all of the metrics have improved off of their worst readings. Enough of the short leading indicators have improved so much that the short term forecast was upgraded to neutral as of this week. As usual, clicking over and reading should bring you “up to the moment” on the economy, and it also rewards me with a penny or two for...

by David Zetland    (One handed economist) Interesting stuff “Biohacking life” — a physics geek gets into our metabolism Governments are printing money to “get out of the crisis”, but they are probably sowing the seeds of the next crisis (of inflation? fiscal collapse?) An incredibly interesting dive into Japanese cosmology The American Press Is Destroying Itself (under pressures of political correctness) This is the governance article (good/bad responses...

New and continued jobless claims level off, as spreading secondary impacts and job recalls balance Weekly initial and continuing jobless claims give us the most up-to-date snapshot of the continuing economic impacts of the coronavirus on employment. Three full months after the initial shock, the overall damage remains huge, with recalls to work roughly balanced with spreading new secondary impacts. First, here are initial jobless claims both seasonally...

Do BLM Protests Prove No More Pandemic? It has become a widespread meme that the many protests over the murder of George Floyd and other racially based police brutality will show that it is fine to end all shutdowns related to the pandemic and end all rules about social distancing and wearing face masks.  Here we are reaching two weeks since these protests with thousands of people involved, supposedly all violating those rules, and we are not seeing a...

Angry Bear Still On List Of Top Economics Blogs For 2020 Intelligent Economist has again put out its annual list of the top 100 economics blogs, with some new ones and some gone, although two of those were due to retirements, especially the  Economists View of Mark Thoma. Closely connected Econospeak , Bondadd blog ,  and Capital Ebbs and Flows also were named to the top 100 economic blogs, ...

Writing for the Majority (5-4):  Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the explanation offered by the Trump administration for adding the question “appears to have been contrived.” Justice John Roberts did leave open the possibility of change if the Administration could provide an adequate answer. Executive branch officials must “offer genuine justifications for important decisions, reasons that can be scrutinized by courts and the interested public....

Coronavirus dashboard for June 17: the second wave of the tsunami comes ashore As of yesterday, there were 2,137,731 total documented coronavirus infections in the US. Total known deaths were 116,963. As I have stated several times in the past month, I believe that coronavirus infections and deaths will wax and wane around the April-May plateau of roughly 20-25,000 new daily infections and 500-2000 daily deaths, at least as long as Trump remains...

Might There Be A V-Shaped Economic Recovery After All? Maybe. This is a matter where if it happens, I shall be proven wrong.  I have mostly emphasized how much uncertainty and lack of knowledge we face about the pandemic as well as the economy in this situation, and have as a result largely stayed away from making specific or definite forecasts on those matters.  However, here and in other places on the internet, I have made a lot of forecasts that the...

The Coronavirus Recession may already (technically) have ended: sales and production both increased in May  – by New Deal democrat Sales and production are two of the four things that economists look for in gauging whether the economy is in expansion or recession, and this morning both of them – retail sales and industrial production – were released for May. So it’s true: as defined by the NBER, the Coronavirus Recession may have only lasted two months,...