The Angry Bear

Trump is blaming the Fed for the recent poor stock market performance. For once, he may be right. The recent market plunge took the stock market PE from the top of my fair value band through the bottom. The last observation is the 14 December close. The fitted PE has is a function of both short and long term yields.  This approach implies that the market is now cheap, but that does not necessarily mean that it is a buy. Figure 1 Maybe you would prefer a...

The most recent year for reported year-round earnings data available for full-time workers revealed the gender earnings gap to be 20 percent between men and women or said a different way women earned 20 percent less than men (Hegewisch 2018). The earnings gap between women and men has been measured (in the past) by taking a snapshot of both genders who have worked fulltime year-round and in a given year. Reviewing a 15-year period from 2001 through 2015,...

Rah Rah Economics Greg Mankiw read Trumponics by Art Laffer and Stephen Moore so we don’t have to: When economists write, they can decide among three possible voices to convey their message. The choice is crucial, because it affects how readers receive their work. The first voice might be called the textbook authority. Here, economists act as ambassadors for their profession. They faithfully present the wide range of views professional economists hold,...

100 Percent Of US Senate Against MBS Wow. Sometime ago here, I called for Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al Sa’ud, (MbS) to be rmoved from his position. How he is punished beyond that for his crimes, I do not care, especially as I think being prevented from becoming the King of Saudi Arabia will be for him the worst punishment. So for once the US Senate agrrees with me, 100%, really. Hey, I have to cheer...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for December 10 -14 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. A decline in mortgage rates unsurprisingly appears to have caused a rush in applications to lock in those rates. Plus one more anomaly ….

Real retail sales very positive; industrial production decent Real retail sales for November, together with the revisions for October, were very positive. While November sales, both nominally and adjusted for inflation, increased +0.2%, October sales were revised upward to a nominal +1.1%. On an inflation adjusted basis, that translates to +0.8%. As a result, as of November both real retail sales and real retail sales per capita set new records:...

A note on initial jobless claims Initial jobless claims for last week were reported at 206,000 this morning. That is one of the lowest weekly readings during this expansion.More significantly, the 4 week moving average is back below 10% off its low, within the range of typical noise: And it is down -4.6% YoY, which as the below graph going back 50 years shows, is actually a quite positive reading: I continue to expect a slowdown next year, so I am...

Via NPR on the Arctic: The Arctic has experienced the “most unprecedented transition in history” in terms of warming temperatures and melting ice, and those changes may be the cause of extreme weather around the globe, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s 2018 Arctic Report Card. The annual report released Tuesday says rapid warming over the past three decades has led to a 95 percent decline of the Arctic’s oldest and...

Dorothy was in a strange land and had no idea what would happen next. The good witch of the North said she should follow the scientific method to a sound forecast. Unfortunately, neither she (nor anyone else) explained what exactly the scientific method is. As she wandered down the yellow brick forking path of endless options, Dorothy was surprised by the voice of a heuristic firmly attached to a degenerate prior. She freed the heuristic from the prior...