The Angry Bear

by Steve Roth (originally published at Evonomics) Economists Agree: Democratic Presidents are Better at Making Us Rich. Eight Reasons Why. In 2013, economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson — no wild-eyed liberals, they — asked a very important question: Why has the U.S. economy performed better under Democratic than Republican presidents, “almost regardless of how one measures performance”? Start with their “performed better” assertion: it’s uncontestable....

October jobs report: probably the best report of the entire expansion HEADLINES: +250,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate unchanged at 3.7% U6 underemployment rate declined -0.1% from 7.5% to 7.4% Here are the headlines on wages and the broader measures of underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, but Want a Job Now:  rose +72,000 from 5.237 million to 5.309 million Part time for economic reasons: fell -21,000 from 4.642 million...

PENSACOLA, FLORIDA (The Borowitz Report)—Backtracking from his earlier suggestion that the military should fire upon migrants if they throw rocks, Donald J. Trump said on Saturday that he was ordering the military to respond to rocks with either paper or scissors. Speaking at a rally in Pensacola, Florida, Trump said that the decision about whether to use paper or scissors to retaliate against rocks would ultimately be left up to military commanders at...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for October 29 – November 2 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators piece is up at Seeking Alpha. Several areas, like rail traffic, saw significant rebounds. But interest rates also rose to new expansion highs as well. As usual, not only does clicking and reading the article bring you up to the moment on what is happening with the economy, it also helps put a little $$$ in my account....

ISM new orders posts lowest reading in nearly 2 years The ISM reported the other day that The October PMI® registered 57.7 percent, a decrease of 2.1 percentage points from the September reading of 59.8 percent. The New Orders Index registered 57.4 percent, a decrease of 4.4 percentage points from the September reading of 61.8 percent. On Tuesday I said that “the first thing I am looking for is decelerating growth which will show up in a reading below...

Trump Says Dems Support Venezuelan “High Taxes And Open Borders” The  average tax rate in Venezuela is 25%. The average tax rate in the US is 26%.  Sorry, Trump, this is yet another lie by Trump, but what else is new on this? I do not know the details of Venezuelan of immigration policies, but at this point in time the issue  in Venezuela is not immigrants freely arriving and causing economic problems, but just the opposite: people leaving in massive...

Three weeks ago, in response to the IPCC report warning that CO2 emissions had to be reduced to 45% of their 2010 levels by 2030 to avoid the possibility of global temperature rising above 1.5°C, I posted “The IPCC 1.5° C Report and the Ten-Hour Week,” (also posted at Angry Bear) which offered the sketch of a plan for how to do that. I have no illusions that the IPCC or any other prestigious organization will latch on to this idea and seek to flesh it out...

Some good news on workers’ wages There was some good news the other morning about workers wages. The quarterly employment cost index showed a q/q increase of +0.9% for wages (red in the graph below), and +0.8% for overall compensations (blue) (which includes things like medical benefits). Nominal YoY increases were +3.0% and 2.8%, respectively: Unlike “average hourly earnings” (green in the graph above), which are reported monthly as part of the jobs...

Recently, I claimed that fivethirtyeight.com is too cautious when correcting polls for house effects. Multiplying their correction by 4/3 gives lower volatility of generic congressional ballot polls (and for the past 100 days multiplying by 3/2 works even better). I think the are conservative, because adjusting or correcting polls is bound to be controversal and so they impose a pseudo prior that all pollsters are unbiased. In any case, I would like to...