The Angry Bear

The Repo Ruckus This is now about three weeks old news, but it is increasingly clear that it is not clear why it happened or if it will happen again.  There was an outbreak of completely unexpected volatility in the repo market, where in the past the Fed had carried out open market operations, although that had largely passed.  Indeed in more recent years when the Fed has intervened in markets it has been in the reverse repo market.  In any case,...

Opinion _ The Rich Really Do Pay Lower Taxes Than You – The New York Times Watch how radically taxes on the wealthy have fallen over the past 70 years: (Full column: https://t.co/XP0a4Iljti) pic.twitter.com/dGxmOjQ1b5 — David Leonhardt (@DLeonhardt) October 7, 2019

Why Is Iraq Blowing Up Now? Yes, Iraq.  It has not made front page headlines with so much else going on, but over the last several days there has been an escalating series of protests against corruption in various parts of Iraq and culminating yesterday in Baghdad with one being met by soldiers firing openly upon the demonstarters with the result being about 104 dead and 6,100 wounded.  The government of Adel Abdul al Mahdi appears in danger of facing a...

September jobs report: excellent in coincident and lagging sectors, cautionary in leading sectors HEADLINES: +136,000 jobs added (+135,000 ex-Census) U3 unemployment rate declined -0.2% from 3.7% to 3.5% (NEW LOW) U6 underemployment rate declined -0.3% from 7.2% to 6.9% (NEW LOW) Leading employment indicators of a slowdown or recession I am highlighting these because many leading indicators overall strongly suggest that an employment slowdown is coming....

2nd whistleblower comes forward after speaking with IG: Attorney The appearance of a second whistleblower will muddy the waters for Herr Trump claiming the first whistleblower got his conversation all wrong. The existence of a second whistleblower — particularly one who can speak directly about events involving the president related to conversations involving Ukraine — could undercut Trump’s repeated insistence that the original complaint, released on...

Does Bob Barr Need It in Writing? I think we all know AG Barr lied about the Mueller report but permit me to go back to this: The moment Attorney General William Barr laid eyes on a letter from special counsel Robert Mueller criticizing Barr’s summary of his two-year investigation, he knew his goose was cooked. Mueller was creating a written record that wouldn’t allow Barr to bastardize his concerns the way he had mischaracterized Mueller’s report....

“Trump’s Executive Order is Backdoor Privatization of Medicare,” Social Security Works, Nancy Altman, October 3, 2019 Thursday and I had to search around for someone who is an expert on Medicare Advantage Plans and Original Medicare. Nancy is one of those experts. Friday and Andrew Sprung has his commentary Trump’s Bid To Destroy Medicare up on xpostfactoid blog. Commercial Healthcare Insurance has been become more and more expensive over the years with...

Despite all the recent stock market volatility the actual S&P 500 PE on trailing operating earnings is almost exactly where my model says it should be. The biggest problem is that the market PE  is about 19 and bond yields are under 2%.  The quick and dirty rule of thumb is that a 100 basis point change in yields should generate a 100 basis point change in the S&P 500 PE.    With bond yields already under 2% the upside potential for the market PE...

The argument has been, if people like their private and company sponsored insurance plans they can keep them; but can they afford to do so? In a recent LA Times and KFF survey, 40 percent of respondents said they had difficulty affording health insurance or health care or had problems paying medical bills. An approximate one-half of respondents said they or a family member skipped or postponed getting health care or prescriptions in the past twelve months...