The Angry Bear

This is a follow up on my post on joy and sorrow. I feel great joy at having found the ultimate abyss of idiocy, but I fear http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com/2017/10/mysterious-ways.html The competition for worst possible argument was provoked by the fact that former White House counsel Don McGahn told Mueller’s team that (sadly) current President Donald Trump twice told him to get Mueller fired and then told him to deny that “fake news” when it was...

by New Deal democrat Sales rebound from government shutdown-induced “mini-recession;” March housing lays an egg While March retail sales rose strongly, total business sales for February – also released yesterday – which includes manufacturers’ and wholesalers’ sales in addition to retail sales, continued to languish. This adds to the evidence that there was a “mini-recession” for several months likely brought about by the lengthy government shutdown, and...

That One Sentence On March 25, Matt Taibbi wrote in Rolling Stone: On Sunday, Attorney General William Barr sent a letter to Congress, summarizing the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation. The most telling section, quoted directly from Mueller’s report, read: “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”...

What Is The “Collusion Delusion”? The Trump crowd has long claimed that there was “no collusion, ” repeatedly in many venues.  Somehow the MSM picked up on this screed, and so it is out there that indeed that the Mueller Report  declared that there was “no collusion,” a phrase that somehow Trump himself long put out there for his followers long before the Mueller Report came out. But, in fact up front in the Mueller Report they made it clear that they...

March real retail sales very strong, but no “all clear” yet This morning’s retail sales report for March was very strong on both a nominal basis, up +1.6%, and also on a real, inflation-adjusted basis, up +1.2%. At the same time, it is still ever so slightly below its peak of five months ago, and YoY real sales have not recovered to those typical for this expansion. Let’s take a look. Below are real retails sales for the last few years, and because it...

Childrens’ Day And The UN Convention On The Rights Of Children Associated with the UN Convention on the Rights of Children is a Universal Childrens’ Day.  It is November 20, the date that in 1959 the UN adopted the first version of the Convention, which had 10 articles.  It is celebrated in many nations, but not in the US. A competitor is International Childrens’ Day, also called the International Day for the Protection of Children.  This is June 1 and...

Josh Marshall explains it very well here. Mueller definitely did not write that he did not find proof without reasonable doubt that the President is a criminal. I want to explain it in a way which is not so good, in fact bad, basically malicious, too petty to be evil. Mueller clearly wrote that he accepted DOJ policy that he could not ask a grand jury to indict Trump *while Trump is President* He added that he would not write that he would have sought...

by Joseph Joyce The global economy seems headed for a slowdown. The IMF now expects global growth this year of 3.3%, a drop of 0.2 of a percentage point from its previous forecast. Growth in the advanced economies is projected to be particularly feeble, with expected U.S. economic growth of 2.2%, growth of 1.3% predicted for the Eurozone , and Japan’s growth anticipated to be 1%. Of course, a breakdown of U.S.-China trade talks, the imposition of new...

YoY Industrial production and structural changes to the US economy since 1980 No big economic releases today, so let me follow up further with a few long-term comments on industrial production. This series goes back 100 years to the beginning of 1919. Since that time it has turned negative YoY 25 times: Of those 25 times, 17 have been during recessions, sometimes having started shortly beforehand. On only 8 occasions have negative YoY readings not...