The Angry Bear

“Guaranteed jobs programs, creating floors for wages and benefits, and expanding the right to collectively bargain are exactly the type of roles that government must take to shift power back to workers and our communities,” — Senator Kirsten Gillibrand “By strengthening their bargaining power and eliminating the threat of unemployment once and for all, a federal job guarantee would bring power back to the workers where it belongs.” — Mark Paul, William...

Stock of Debt Held by US Public Has Tripled Over the Last Decade & Other Misleading Information My title was the heading of Figure 19 in something from Deutsche Bank that has John Cochrane all stressed out over a pending debt crisis again. This graph is gorgeous. US deficits have, historically, been driven overwhelmingly by the state of the business cycle, and have very little to do with tax policies and spending decisions that dominate press...

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...