The Angry Bear

Dear Readers,  Commenters, and Bears, Bill and I are looking for an additional editor:  a participant in running the Angry Bear site and interact with contributors and readers to encourage responses and moderate threads as administrator add consistent points of view in posts and finding topics to supplement contributors efforts, become knowledgeable with the administration of our site ranging from problem solving WordPress to registrations like Go-daddy,...

(Dan here…lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) by Robert Waldmann To Be Sure Jennifer Senior I just read an op-ed by Jennifer Senior. I am not 100% satisfied. To be sure, she denounces the Republican Party in no uncertain terms. The op-ed is not completely Balanced. However, old habits die hard. The op-ed contains a good bit of nonsense. Some of it is there to give the essay a beginning a middle and an end. More of it is a bit of reflexive...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for October 21 – 25 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The producer side of the economy generally, and manufacturing specifically, remains weak or even contracting. But the larger consumer side, benefitting from lower mortgage rates, continues to power ahead. As usual, clicking over and reading helps reward me a little bit for my efforts. ...

Manufacturing still weak I’m still traveling this morning, but for now let me just note that this morning’s durable goods orders showed a decline again: Figure 1 Manufacturing is flat to slightly contracting. The consumer, primarily thanks to lower mortgage rates, is keeping the economy going.

The Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic: part 4 of 4: the Empire as hegemonic “Banana Republic” ruled by caudillos As we have seen, the Roman Republic was brought down by an escalating series of acts of political violence, from murders to organized political mobs, to private legions, to four military marches over a period of 40 years on a Rome which had no permanent  defense force whose loyalty was to the Republic. The violence and military takeovers...

EM: The Repubs have a difficult time blocking national and state wide elections for Pres and Senators in Michigan. It is only when they pack a district or parcel a majority into several districts are they able to achieve a win in places where a fair election will contest who does win. In any case, the 11,000 difference between Trump and Clinton was due to record turnout in voting for “others” in 2016 as compared to 2012. I would attribute this to lies...

by New Deal democrat The divergent nowcast and one model’s forecast at Seeking Alpha Over 10 years ago I found a good, quick-and-dirty way of looking at the Index of Leading Indicators. It only matters at turning points, which means, for the first time since the 2015-16 “shallow industrial recession,” it’s worth looking at now. That, plus a concise look at the bifurcation in the producer vs. consumer economy as it stands now, is a post I’ve put up over...

The Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic: part 3 of 4: the final hammer-blows “The Republic is nothing, a mere name without body or form.” – Julius Caesar This is part 3 of my four part look at why the Roman Republic, which was successful and stable for nearly 4 centuries, ultimately fell into tyranny. In part 1 I described the structure of the Republic and the underlying reasons for its fall. In part 2 I described the first 4 episodes of civil war that...

The Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic: part 2 of 4: the first hammer-blows This is part 2 of my four part look at the Roman Republic and subsequent Empire. In part 1, I described the structure of the Republic, and its several centuries of stability and success, as well as the underlying causes of its ultimate downfall. The hammer-blows that rained down on the Republic from the existential dispute between Senatorial oligarchs on the one hand, and Roman...