The Angry Bear

Why I’m Not Going to Properly Review “The People’s Republic of Wal-Mart” I’ve been thinking about alternatives to capitalism for a long time now.  I’ve taught several courses on the topic and plan eventually to write up what I think I’ve learned, so naturally I was intrigued by the new book, The People’s Republic of Wal-Mart: How the World’s Biggest Corporations Are Laying the Foundation for Socialism (PRW) by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski.  I...

Gas prices fail to ignite overall inflation in April, but real wages flat so far for 2019 The consumer price index rose +0.3% in April, just as in March mainly as a result of a big monthly increase in gas prices. This is actually a surprisingly small increase because, as I pointed out last month, almost every time gas prices have increased by as much as they did — up 9% in March and 11% for April — consumer prices as a whole have gone up at least +0.4%....

There is a number of comments and commentary about the 2020 election and what if Trump refuses to leave. I put up a few and also a good article from Vox. – A comment (ken_lov) stolen from another site I frequent and read from time to time: “From time to time on other websites I’ve outlined a scenario where the Supreme Court agrees with Trump that the 2020 election was irreparably tainted by fraud and interference from abroad, and consequently issues an...

The Psilocybin Referendum In Denver This is one of the last things I was expecting to see happen; that a referendum in Denver would effectively decriminalize magic mushrooms or more specifically the main constituent component of them, the psychedelic drug, psilocybin.  But this has happened in the Mile High City, if by a narrow margin.  I largely welcome this.  After all, it has always been sort of ridiculous to arrest someone for owning a naturally...

Are initial jobless claims showing a re-assertion of an underlying weak economic trend? I don’t normally comment on initial jobless claims, but I’m following them with particular interest at this point. Here’s why. Last spring the long leading indicators were still at least weakly positive. I saw growth ahead through Q1 of this year, and getting questionable in Q2. By last summer, the enough long leading indicators were down that I called for a slowdown...

Marquette Nat. Bank of Minneapolis v. First of Omaha Service Corp., 439 U.S. 299 (1978). In a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision, the court held states anti-usury laws regulating interest rates unenforceable against nationally chartered banks based in other states. Justice William Brennan: It was the intent of Congress when it passed the National Banking Act, nationally chartered banks would be subject only to federal regulation by the Comptroller of...

The real trade deficit ( million 2012 $) increased from $81,558 in February to $ 82,054 in March.  The March observation was between the January and February data points so it was not large enough to generate a significant change in imports  0.58 percentage point contribution to first quarter real GDP growth.   In the first quarter real GDP report the significant contribution of foreign trade to real GDP growth has been interpreted by the administration...

Econospeak (Barkley Rosser, pgl, Peter Dorman, Tom Walker) is in the financial section along with  Bonddad blog (New Deal democrat) and  Capital Ebbs and Flows (Joseph Joyce), and I am proud to say have a direct connection to Angry Bear (under general blogs…). Dear Dan, I wanted to let you know that your blog, Angry Bear Blog has been featured in the Top 100 Economics Blogs of 2019 One of the significant changes this year has been the removal of...

(Dan here…Lifted from comments at Spencer’s SP 500 PE) PGL comments: 1. It is strike day for Lyft and Uber. Uber’s IPO is estimated to be at $90 billion which strikes me as way overpriced. Why? Net revenue is only $7.9 billion whereas operating costs are $12 billion for the latest reported year. Their net revenue is 7.5 times that of Lyft. Lyft’s operating costs turn out to be 170% of its net revenues. Interestingly both companies have net revenues that...