The Angry Bear

by Joseph Joyce Capital Flows in a World of Low Interest Rates Interest rates in advanced economies continue to persist at historically low levels. This trend is due not only to the response of central banks to slow growth, but also fundamental factors. If these interest rates continue close to their current levels, what are the consequences for international capital flows? The decline in rates in the advanced economies has been widely documented and...

by New Deal democrat February housing data indicates slump not over UPDATED Housing data, in the form of February permits and starts, finally caught up after the government shutdown. Two sources of house price data were also released this morning. The bottom line is that, depending on how you measure, housing construction is likely either at or just slightly above a short term bottom. Price growth, meanwhile, continues to decelerate. I have a more...

The Barr Letter and Useful Idiots of the Jaded Left As everyone knows by now, President Trump has been totally “exonerated” for everything, ever, by a four-page letter from William Barr, the Attorney General whom he appointed expressly to “exonerate” him. With regard to potential obstruction-of-justice, on page three of his letter, Barr cited Special Counsel Mueller’s statement that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a...

Maybe No Conspiracy Or Coordination, But Lots And Lots Of Collusion Trump and his supporters have been loudly claiming that the Barr letter about the Mueller report has shown “no collusion!” which has been shouted loudly from the rooftops, with many supposedly respectable sources such as the New York Times agreeing with this assessment, thus supporting the long running Trump/Hannity repeated claim. But I note that the big headline on this morning’s...

The coming slowdown in employment Last summer I wrote a piece entitled “What the compressed yield curve means for employment.” I re-read it over the weekend, and in light of what has been going on in the bond market, I thought it was worth an update. Let me pretty much re-quote the entire piece: ———— Four times during the 1980s and 1990s the difference in the interest yield between 2 and 10 year treasury bonds got about as low as it is now [Note:...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for March 18 – 22 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. As you can imagine, the big news was about the fact that almost every single yield curve there is – except the one I report on every week in that post – inverted yesterday. Also, as I mentioned in an e-mail to a couple of folks this morning, the big thing that bothers me is that ***EVERYONE*** is watching it. And a forecasting tool...

Over 50% of all wealth in the US is inherited not earned I got waylaid putting together a very detailed post about how the newly-widened Panama Canal is disrupting the internal US transportation network. When it goes up at Seeking Alpha, I’ll link to it. In the meantime, here is something that I found a week or two ago for you to chew on. Over half of all US wealth is not earned but inherited: Click on picture to enlarge. According to a report...

Alan Krueger And Happiness It took awhile for me to remember after his apparent suicide that the late Alan Krueger was the coauthor of what I consider to be the best paper published on happiness economics, “Develpments in the Measurement of Subjective Well-Being,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2006, 20(1), 2-24, https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/08953300677 .  (I apologize if that link is no good.) This paper was coauthored with is...

… And, the 10 year treasury yield inverts Yesterday over at Seeking Alpha I wrote about how the Fed is boxed in. The essence of the article is that, while lower rates are good for the housing market, a fuller yield curve inversion adds to the evidence that a recession may take place first, unless the Fed completely reverses course and starts cutting interest rates very soon. Please click on over and read the whole article. Not only should it be...