The Angry Bear

Why Did Oil Prices Plunge This Black Friday? Nothing to do with the American super big shopping day after Thanksgiving, but several items, some of which may reverse themselves.  As it is, it was a pretty big drop, nearly 5 percent for the day for both West Texas and Brent crude, with the latter now just above $60 per barrel. The big headline is the resignation of Iraqi prime minister Adil Abdul Mahdi. The immediate trigger of that was that it was...

by New Deal democrat The consumer is still alright, November 2019 edition I have a new post up at Seeking Alpha. A few months ago I took a look at the order in which I would expect the dominoes to fall if there were to be a consumer-led recession. One more domino has fallen, but several important ones are still upright. As usual, clicking over and reading puts a couple of pennies in my pocket, and should be educational for you....

I looked at this at first, wondered what it depicted, thought it might be a piece of art, and puzzled over it a bit. It is a topographical depiction (Lidar) of the Mississippi River. If you look closely, you can see roads and various plots of land in addition to the movement of the river bed over time and the various elevations. One of the key techniques used in modern cartography has its beginnings in 17th century map-making. Relief shading techniques as...

Complicating The ARAMCO IPO The Saudi ARAMCO IPO is happening on the Saudi exchange just for Saudi citizens, where apparently there is a not-so-subtle campaign on well off and connected citizens (who wish to remain that way) to buy into the IPO.  But there continues to be delays in opening it up to the rest of the world, with this partly reflecting fears of demands that might be made for more openness, and all that, with various Saudis not keen on that,...

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving with family, friends, or strangers. My young and pretty 20 – something year-old wife and I were traveling years ago. We were standing in a long line into the only restaurant at O’hare airport. It was a couple of days before a holiday and the airport was packed. If you frequent O’Hare today, you must be thinking; “What is he thinking? O’Hare has many assorted places to dine.” Like I said this was years ago. O’Hare...

Housing rebound continues; price appreciation stabilizes Just a quick note, as I am traveling today.New home sales declined slightly in October from September, but remain at the high end of this expansion. The renewed uptrend in housing sales, due to lower mortgage rates, is clearly intact: Meanwhile house prices, as measured by the Case Shiller index, also increased at a slightly faster YoY rate, 3.2% for September vs. 3.1% in August (blue): As I...

Putin Beating Up People At Russia’s Top University That would be Moscow State University, the “Harvard” of Russia. Not in the MSM at all, but I have mu sources, and apparently sometime last week the FSB, the successor to the domestic  arm of the old  KGB, raised Moscow State (whose main building is one of those “Stalin Gothic” skyscrapers) to capture a student who had been posting leaflets on walls protesting recent government actions.  He was reortedly...

Rebound in existing home sales continues, but beware the housing “choke collar” Although they account for about 90% of the entire housing market, existing home sales are the least consequential to the economy. That’s because building new homes entails a bunch of economic activity, from architects, builders, building trades contractors, landscapers in the building process, followed by furniture, appliances, and yard improvements after the owners move in....

Have the Transfer Pricing Experts at KPMG Heard of the Repo Ruckus? If one thinks Trump’s economic advisors are the dumbest people on the planet, I have a new candidate for that award – a few supposed experts on intercompany loans that work for KPMG: In 2017, the ARRC selected the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) as the alternative that represents the best replacement rate for USD-denominated LIBOR. SOFR is based on overnight transactions in the...

by David Zetland  (originally published at One handed economist) Real decentralization is radical Visionaries, consultants and public speakers love to explain how they are embracing distribution over decentralization over centralization, using an image like this: Figure 1 What drives me crazy about this image is that it actually undersells true decentralization, i.e., when everyone is connected to everyone: Really decentralized (D) We already have...