The Angry Bear

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for December 24 – 28 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators column is Up at Seeking Alpha. Ideally a change in trend in the long leading indicators should, over time, manifest in the short leading indicators. Well, in the first half of 2018, the long leading indicators went from positive to weak positive to neutral, where they have generally remained ever since. Now, the short leading indicators have …. Click over and...

Real Military Pay Donald Trump lies about everything including military pay: Trump Brags To Troops About A Fictional Giant Pay Raise He Got Them – The president told military personnel in Iraq that they’ll get a raise of over 10 percent, their first in a decade. But it’s 2.6 percent, and they get a hike every year. Dave Jamieson even notes that Bill Kristol has called out Trump on this whopper. But to me this is not the story. The real story is that...

In The New York Times Abby Goodnough wrote” she got a Vivitrol (naltrexone) shot but it was so expensive — her co-payment was $600 — that she never got another” !!! This is insane. Naltrexone is an opioid antagonist. It prevents opioids from causing a high (and relieving pain and suppressing coughing and breathing). In no way is it conceivably a drug of abuse. But opioid addicts who wish to cut off all effects of opioids have to pay for their...

To add to Robert Waldman’s post on ACA enrollment, here is the chart as taken from Andrew Sprung’s Blog (Expostfactoid) on the ACA. This is data Charles Gaba had gathered and Andrew rearranged. Note non-expansion Medicaid states did better than expansion states in enrollment. Why is that true? The states marked in yellow on the left are expansion states. Without getting into the data and explaining Andrew’s findings, it is interesting the difference in...

Barack Obama just won Gallup’s man most admired by US adults poll for the 11th straight time. Also, in spite of the Republicans’ determined efforts including elimination of the mandate, Healthcare.gov signups are only 4% fewer than last year’s. Finally, I am thinking about “eleven dimensional chess”. This was a joke about Obama and Obamaniacs who ascribed his amazing luck to brilliantly subtle strategy. To be honest I was thinking of Hillary Clinton...

Taxes Up 30%! A couple of months ago yours truly complained a bit about some fiscal dishonesty coming from Team Trump: He was basically lying to us hoping the public would be too stupid to realize that when the price level rose by 2.5% during the same period, we are talking about a 2% real decrease in tax revenues. But if we look at customs duties we do see an increase in a category that represents a very modest part of Federal tax collections. Back in...

Could an Oil Patch decline turn a 2019 slowdown into an outright recession? One of the items I mentioned in my piece yesterday at Seeking Alpha was the recent big decline in oil prices. Please go read the piece, it puts a couple of pennies in my pocket! But in that article I referenced the decline in industrial production that was caused by the 2014-15 decline in gas prices. I wanted to follow up a little here. In 2014 into early 2015, Oil prices...

Back down from the mountains where it was snowing yesterday, a silent beauty. Sitting in my daughter’s kitchen drinking a cup of Keurig manufactured coffee. The household is quiet as I think about the events of the last months and attempt to pen a few words. Washington is still shut down and one man pouts. Thousands of people suffer the impact of a hurricane in Puerto Rico, floods in the South, and wild fires in California due to our impact upon the...

On the Front Lines of Climate Change: Old White Homeowners, Many of them Upper Class The other night I was sitting at home, locked in a conversation about climate change and race.  How is this a racial issue, I asked?  I realize that the society I live in has pervasive racism, and one should always keep this in mind, but how specifically is climate change worse for nonwhites? Well, it’s all about first and worst impacts, I was told.  People of color are...