The Angry Bear

by New Deal democrat The impact of coronavirus on my slowdown vs. recession forecast  For roughly the last half year, my forecast has been that a slowdown without a recession was the most likely scenario, *IF* the economy were left to its own devices. Well, given the horror scenarios possible with the coronavirus outbreak, the economy is certainly not being “left to its own devices.” I took a look at how that intersects with my forecast over at Seeking...

Live-blogging the Fifteenth Amendment: February 22, 1869 On February 22, the Senate took up the revisions that the House of Representatives had made to their proposals from one week prior. The House had struck from the Senate’s version, as sent to the House, the section extending the protections of the Amendment to qualifications for office, as well as the companion Amendment reforming the Electoral College. Senator Stewart (Republican from Nevada)...

Who Wins Prairie du Chien Wins the White House That would be Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, whose French name means “prairie dog,” and which is located where the Wisconsin River empties into the Mississippi River, third oldest town in the state founded by Europeans (the French) after Green Baay (originallly Fort Nicolet) and Portage, also located at crucial spots long used by the Native Indians for river transport.  It is also the county seat for Crawford...

VA-Like Negotiations on Insulin Prices Could Save Medicare Billions, MedPage Today, Zeena Nackerdien, February 21, 2020 I am going to dispense with the reasoning dissing the increased pricing of Insulin and go straight to a pricing strategy. Suffice it to say, the various versions developed of Insulin do not justify the pricing increases seen today. Recently, Philip Longman (“Best Care Anywhere”) was advocating for Medicare pricing for everyone using...

by Joseph Joyce The Long Reach of U.S. Monetary Policy The spillover of U.S. monetary policy on foreign economies has become an active area of research. Analysts seek to identify the channels of transmission between the policy stance of the Federal Reserve and foreign interest rates and credit extension. The usual account is that an expansionary Fed policy leads to capital outflows and an appreciation of foreign currencies as investors seek higher yields...

Regional Fed Manufacturing Indexes Improving It’s been a really slow newsweek so far, with no important data until tomorrow.  Until then, here’s a note of interest. This morning’s Empire State Manufacturing Survey was the third regional report in a row (after Richmond and Dallas in the last week of January) to show a strong rebound in strength, as the new orders index jumped 15.5 to 22.1 (values over zero indicate improvement). Here’s what the average...

Who “Got” Iraqi Oil? Not the US. Dick Cheney collaborated with US major oil companies in a plot to at least take over operating the oil production in Iraq, OPEC’s second largest producer and exporter, if not get to own the oil itself outright (which has not happened as oil in the ground was and remains owned by the Iraqi government, which is the way it is in pretty much all OPEC members).  Of all people, Juan Cole and many other progressives agreed that...

Production, transportation, and sales show a stalled economy Below is a graph I put together in a discussion of transportation that I’ll probably post next week at Seeking Alpha. The idea behind the graph is that (1) everything that is produced needs to be transported to market; i.e., the two metrics should move essentially in tandem (this is known as the “Dow theory” in financial markets); and (2) sales also ought to reflect – and slightly lead – what is...