The Angry Bear

According to the latest figures, 93.3% of federal prisoners are men. The male to female incarceration rate is also wildly lopsided in state and county facilities, and to my knowledge, pretty much everywhere else in the world. I also am unable to think of a single example where there is reason to believe that women outnumber men in jails and prisons. Furthermore, I don’t see any particular reason why incarcerated men will not continue to outnumber...

In which I (partially) disagree with Dean Baker about the stock market Dean Baker complained yesterday about pundits who talk about the stock market in terms of economic well-being: As someone who routinely considers both corporate profits and stock prices in terms of economic well-being, I disagree — somewhat. The simple fact is, corporate profits are a long leading indicator for the economy as a whole, and stock prices a short leading...

On JOLTS, I continue to dissent The only two significant items of data in the second week of the month typically had been the JOLTS report and the Labor Market Conditions Index. I say, “had been” because the Fed has discontinued reporting the LMCI.  Here’s their explanation: Although the LMCI was reconstructed back 50 years, it was only published in real time for the last few.  I am disappointed.  Even if the Fed believes the LMCI was not giving them the...

(Dan here…posted a day later) The Financial Crisis Tenth Anniversary Yesterday, August 9, is being widely proclaimed as the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the financial crisis that fully crashed in September, 2008, with the recession that began at the end of 2007 plunging more profoundly and widely after that.  The specific event on August 9, 2007 was the limiting of withdrawals from US mortgage backed hedge funds by the BNP Paribas bank in Paris. ...

Atlantic: An NSC Staffer Is Forced Out Over a Controversial Memo Esquire: This Is Pure, Unadulterated American Crazy Foreign Policy: Here’s the Memo that Blew Up the NSC Mother Jones:You Should Read the “Maoist Insurgency” Memo. It’s Bananas Wonkette: Of Course Trump Loves This Fucking Bonkers NSC Memo Calling For Civil War Back in 2011 after mass murderer Anders Breivik slaughtered 77 people in Norway I had a look at his “manifesto” because I  had...

The already infamous case of Foxconn in Wisconsin illustrates a dynamic we are likely to witness more before we are rid of the illegitimate Trump regime. One of the regime’s hallmarks has been a set of unpredictable trade policies with a definite protectionist tilt. The United States was withdrawn from the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement on January 23. On May 19, the regime officially announced it would renegotiate the North American Free Trade...

July jobs report: across the board solid HEADLINES: +209,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate down -0.1% from 4.4% to 4.3% U6 underemployment rate unchanged 8.6% Here are the headlines on wages and the chronic heightened underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, but Want a Job Now: down -11,000 from 5.431 million to 5.420 million Part time for economic reasons: down -44,000 from 5.326 million to 5.282 million Employment/population...

Dan here…I have been notified that there are some problems with comments, such as updating the number of comments, automatic fill in of data for regular users, and comments can ‘disappear’ before completion (which btw just happened to my first try at this note), I have notified MEV tech of the problems. I will disappear this note when the problems are fixed.

I haven’t been following the Google Memo saga all that closely, but I do have some random thoughts about the whole brouhaha: 1. If the distribution of skillsets, interests and temperament is the same between men and women, why do the latest figures (June 24, 2017) from the Bureau of Prisons indicate that 93.3% of federal prisoners are men? 2. Would a rational person, upon learning that 93.3% of federal prisoners are men, jump to the conclusion that our...