The Angry Bear

Gimme shelter Q1 2018 update: rents and house prices all at or near new extremes This post is a comprehensive update as to the cost of new and existing homes vs. renting, all measured compared with median household income. As such it is epistolary in length. So here is the TL:DR version: as a multiple of median household income, new home prices are at an extreme beyond even the peak of the housing bubble, while existing home prices are about 5% under...

The great recession of 2008-9 followed an extraordinary house price bubble. The sluggish was characterized by a very slow recovery of residential investment. Oddly, the extensive revision of macroeconomic models which implied a very low probability of great recessions has not involved a focus on housing. Instead it has focused on financial frictions – essentially it is assumed that the 2008-9 recession was extraordinary because a major financial...

Duncan Foley On Socialist Alternatives to Capitalism Yes, it is May Day, time to think about workers and socialism, while Vladimir Putin gets himself inaugurated for another term as President of Russia, with military vehicles parading In Red Square like they used to for the glory of the workers, but today for the glory of President Putin. So, a couple of weeks ago there was a conference at the New School honoring Duncan Foley, who seems to be gradually...

[embedded content] Federal Deficit to Top $1 Trillion in 2020, CBO Says. The gentleman to the right is my former Economics Professor at Loyola University Chicago.

March 2018 personal income and spending Programming note: I’ve been working on a mega-post about housing, that is now complete except for a few graphs. So, please excuse the brevity otherwise. March 2018 real personal income and spending were both positive. So far, so good. The personal saving rate fell slightly: Again, this is consistent with a late cycle dynamic where consumers are more stretched than they were earlier in the expansion. Real personal...

Last week I was browsing through one of the books on the shelf at work, which had in it three essays by the inter-war German Marxist Karl Korsch. One of the essays, a 1932 introduction to Capital mentioned mentioned a section in Chapter 24, “The So-Called Labour Fund” as exemplary of Marx’s critique of political economy. The “labour fund” was more commonly known as the wages-fund, the doctrine famously recanted by John Stuart Mill in 1869. After it had...

There has been a bit of commotion recently about the Job Guarantee idea (AKA employer of last resort). I don’t consider myself an opponent of the strategy but I do have several reservations about its political feasibility, the marketing rhetoric of its advocates, and its economic and administrative transparency. Some of these concerns I share with an analysis presented by Robert LaJeunesse in his 2009 book, Work Time Regulation as Sustainable Full...

[embedded content]Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow zeroes in on Mick Mulvaney cutting funding to preserve the Great lakes which no one state controls and will suddenly become a Federal issue if this vast national resource of fresh water is polluted. Quelle Surprise! Mick Mulvaney purposely gets it wrong by comparing Arkansas dependency on Federal taxes to Michigan and Wisconsin dependency. Arkansas ranks 22nd in dependency on Federal $, Michigan 25th and...