The Angry Bear

Industrial production, jobless claims, and retail sales As I noted this morning, a slew of important data was released. Let me deal with the “normal” weekly and monthly data in this post. First, industrial production continues to languish, down significantly from the end of last year, whether measured in total or just as to manufacturing: The saving grace here is that it has not declined as much as it did during the 2015-16 “shallow industrial...

From treehuggers, “Home Remedies,” Melissa Breyer, August 12, 2019 treehugger publication was also a part of Slate’s “Green Challenge” which Slate started publishing in conjunction with treehugger.org. a decade plus few years or so ago. Chicken Soup for a Cold? Toronto-based dietitian and Director of Food and Nutrition at Medcan, Leslie Beck: “There is no evidence to prove that eating chicken soup is effective at treating the common cold. However, it’s...

Quick hits on a major Thursday economic news blitz There has been a ton of significant economic news this morning. I’m not going to be able to get to all or even most of it in depth. So I am going to leave a quick rundown here. Starting with the positive: -nominal retail sales up +0.6%, up +0.3% in real terms, up +0.2% Per Capita. This is another new high and suggests the US consumer continues to be in good shape (relatively speaking). Note that much of...

Just thought this would be of interest to our readers.  This was aired yesterday, 8/15/19 on: The Take Away, NPR.   (About 12 minutes long.) [embedded content]Click the arrow to hear

@sethcotlar has a very excellent thread asking never Trump conservatives what really changed with Trump. He says he is willing to be convinced that Trump isn’t just letting the mask drop and saying the quiet parts out loud, but that they haven’t made a case that Conservativism was ever worth anything. Zack Beauchamp fair used it over at Vox.com It is devastating and brief (Twitter is evil but it does prevent prolixity — might be the only medium for...

While the yield curve turning negative is getting a lot of attention and seems to be the main excuse for yesterdays stock market drop, there are other financial indicators that are also signaling weaker economic growth ahead. The primary one is quality spreads as the yield on corporate bonds are rising relative to treasuries.  This is driven by investors fear that in a weak economy, recession environment the risk of corporate defaults rises and bond...

” The long line of trucks is a traffic jam of military trucks. Shenzhen (China), to state the obvious, is across the border and located just north of Hong Kong (see map). This show of force could still be a well poised threat to Hong Kong warning them to discontinue their protests or else. Shenzhen is an approximate 20 miles from Hong Kong and can be traveled by rail, bus, or limo. Click on the images to enlarge. On a business trip, I was scheduled to...

Real average and aggregate wage growth for July 2019: yellow flag for aggregate wages Now that we have the July inflation reading, let’s take a look at real wages. First of all, nominal average hourly wages in June increased +0.2%, while consumer prices increased +0.3%, meaning real average hourly wages for non-managerial personnel decreased -0.1%. This results in a slight decline of real wages to 97.0% of their all time high in January 1973: On a...

by New Deal democrat My preliminary long leading forecast through midyear 2020 This post is up at Seeking Alpha. This is my first look at economic conditions into next summer. I suspect that it is contrary to most punditry that you will read. In any event, as usual clicking over and reading helps reward me for the effort I put in to this endeavor.