The Angry Bear

February JOLTS: a mirror of the poor jobs report The JOLTS report on labor is noteworthy and helpful because it breaks down the jobs market into a more granular look at hiring, firing, and voluntary quits. Its drawback is that the data only goes back less than 20 years, so from the point of view of looking at the economic cycle, it has to be taken with a large dose of salt. With that disclaimer out of the way, Tuesday’s JOLTS report for February generally...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for April 8 – 12 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Lower interest rates have to some extent been offset by weaker real money supply. In any event, they haven’t fed through into other, shorter term indicators just yet. As always, clicking over and reading should bring you up to date on the economy, and reward me a little for my efforts. ...

A President Falsely Charging ‘Treason.’ The Constitution: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.” Article III; Section 3: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to...

Trump Has Birth Nations Skipping Generations Starting around 2011 or so, Donald Trump began to get a lot of attention on the looney racist right in the US by becoming one of the leading advocates of birtherism, the claim that Barack Obama was born in Kenya rather than Hawaii.  Of course, Obamam’s father was born in Kenya. Now, curiously, Trump is at it again, although now involving his own family.  He has taken to claiming that his father was born in...

Elizabeth Warren Wants to Collect More in Corporate Profits Taxes John Harwood reports: Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren proposes raising $1 trillion in government revenue from a new tax on profits of the largest corporations. The proposed surtax would prevent Amazon and other companies with profits exceeding $100 million from wiping out their tax liabilities altogether. Instead of taxable corporate income as defined by the IRS, the 7%...

Real wages got gassed in March The consumer price index rose +0.4% in March, mainly as a result of a big monthly increase in gas prices. That really shouldn’t have been a surprise, since almost every time gas prices have increased by as much as they did in March — up 9% for the month — consumer prices as a whole have gone up at least +0.4%. I’m showing just the last 10 years in the graph below: In fact, ex-gas, consumer inflation ex-energy has been...

Downturn in manufacturing new orders adds to evidence of slowdown I don’t normally pay much attention to the new factory orders report, because it is simply too noisy to be of much use. But as of February’s report, released Monday and showing a -0.1% decline in “core” new orders, there is enough to at least take notice. Here are overall new factory orders (blue, left scale) and “core” new orders (red, right scale) for the past 25 years: In the first...

In a low inflation world firms tend to raise prices once a year, typically in the first quarter of the calendar year or their fiscal year.   Because of this very strong seasonal pattern, on a not seasonally adjusted  around 50% of the annual increase in the core CPI —  excluding food and energy — occurs in the first quarter This very strong pattern gives great insight in to the annual inflation rate. One, is if this year’s first quarter is greater than...

When Jackasses reign. [embedded content]John Kerry answers a Congressman. “Kerry delivered his rebuke of the GOP’s inaction on the environment to Rep. James Comer (R-K.Y.). Comer questioned whether there was a reasonable way for the U.S. to afford the ideas entailed in the resolution, which was introduced by Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in February. Kerry: ‘There are a lot of different proposals about how to proceed. I don’t know that any...