The Angry Bear

Housing: comprehensive review of August reports – by New Deal democratI pay particular attention to housing because it is ian important long leading indicator for the economy. And more and more evidence is accumulating  — although it is not universal — that housing may have passed its peak in this cycle. Last year housing was resued by an autumn surge. I don’t think that will happen this year, but there are conflicting signals. My comprehensive review of...

The *rate* of new jobless claims, at all-time lows, forecasts even lower unemployment I thought I’d start out with something I haven’t looked at in awhile: initial jobless claims as a share of the population and as a leading indicator for the unemployment rate. This economic expansion has featured two contrary extremes in the labor market: low wage growth and increasingly vanishing layoffs (I don’t think that’s a coincidence, but that’s a subject for...

The US-Mexico Trade Deal Dies Nobody is calling it that, but the low key story on the back pages of Wednessday’s major papers report that this is what has happened, not to my surprise.  September 29 (or maybe the 30th at a stretch) is the deadline for President Trump to submit to the Congress the final version of the US-Mexico trade deal if there is any chance of it being passed by the US Senate in time for outgoing Mexican President Pena Nieto to sign...

A Weak Defense of Citizen United: Ownership v. Control Many thanks to Peter Dorman for highlighting Citizens United As Bad Corporate Law. I guess we had to endure this comment, which is a really weak rebuttal: Corporate shareholders are most definitely owners; they alone have the authority to sell their shares or the company’s assets. Their rights are based not on contract law but statutory rules of franchise. They are guaranteed rights of assembly abd...

A Few Thoughts on “Sorry to Bother You” I saw this film several weeks ago and have been meaning to say a few things about it.  Herewith: 1. This is an exceptionally intelligent movie by American standards.  It maintains a high level of wit and observation from beginning to end, and little zingers flash by in almost every frame without announcing themselves.  It speaks up to its audience, something I really appreciate. 2. STBY fits into a tradition of...

Citizens United, Thoroughly Debunked I admit I haven’t paid too much attention to debates over Citizens United, since I regard the direction taken by regulation, control over who may contribute to political campaigns and how much they can put up, to be misguided.  I would like to see comprehensive control over how much money can be spent on behalf of candidates, period.  (I would also like to see a mandate that all such contributions be funneled through...

Is the Ecological Salvation of the Human Species at Hand? In “De-growth vs a Green New Deal,” Robert Pollin relies on the same blurring of distinctions that Robert Solow employed 46 years earlier in his condemnation of The Limits to Growth as “bad science.” Nicholaus Georgescu-Roegen pointed out Solow’s obfuscation in the article that inspired the term “degrowth.” That historical context is vital for understanding why Pollin’s “blueprint for ecological...

by Brad Delong (originally published at Grasping at Reality with at least Theree Hands) BRETT KAVANAUGH: A MULTIPLE TRAIN WRECK IN MANY DIMENSIONS: MONDAY SMACKDOWN I confess that I have been procrastinating on various things. Why? Because I have been unable to tear my eyes away from the multiple train crash that is the confirmation process… the career… the life of Brett Kavanaugh. My view of this is a third- or fourth-hand view. It is the view of...

Mainstream Media Says Trump Triumphs Over Iran! That would be several stories in both the New York Times and the Washington Post over the last two days: Trump’s policy against Iran is a great success and it  is completely reasonable and justified. This reporting and columnizing has followed three tracks. One was in a column yesterday in WaPo from Mark Thiessen of AEI, generally pro-Trump.  His column was about how Trump in general doing well on foreign...