The Angry Bear

by New Deal democrat Measures of underemployment continue to show improvement The unemployment rate, at 4.7%, is generally acknowledged to be decent, although not great.  But what of the underemployed? Typically as an economy expands, the U6 (unemployed + underemployed) rate has declined more than the U3 (unemployed only) rate, as shown on the below graph which subtracts U3 from U6, thus leaving us with just the underemployed: As the recovery matures, the...

A few weeks ago I had a post looking at the success of a number of countries. I noted that countries that do well include, (in no particular order): the US, Canada, Northwest Europe, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and, until China began applying a heavier thumb, Hong Kong. Those also happen to be the countries that would attract the most foreigners interested in being citizens, so this quick and dirty list...

by New Deal democrat February jobs report: hitting on all cylinders but wages HEADLINES: +236,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate down -0.1% from 4.8% to 4.7% U6 underemployment rate down -0.2% from 9.4% to 9.2% 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 -142,000 from 5.739 million to 5.597 million Part time for economic reasons: down -136,000 from...

 by New Deal democrat A quick primer on interest rates and rate hikes With increasing speculation that the Fed will again raise interest rates this month, I thought I would take a look at how long term rates, and the yield curve, react. As most everybody who follows this stuff knows, in the last 60 years the yield curve has always inverted before the onset of a recession — which presumably means that it narrows before it inverts. But *how* does it...

On Sunday, the Guardian published a letter signed by a number of prominent psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists and the like. Coincidentally, the list includes Steven Pinker who I happened to be quoting in a post from the same day. Here’s the title: No evidence to back idea of learning styles Here are the first two paragraphs: There is widespread interest among teachers in the use of neuroscientific research findings in educational practice. However,...

by Joseph Joyce The Emerging Market Economies and the Appreciating Dollar U.S. policymakers are changing gears. First, the Federal Reserve has signaled its intent to raise its policy rate several times this year. Second, some Congressional policymakers are working on a border tax plan that would adversely impact imports. Third, the White House has announced that it intends to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure projects. How all these measures affect the U.S....

I was re-reading random parts of Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature and came across this: In an insightful book on the history of force, the political scientist James Payne suggests that ancient peoples put a low value on other people’s lives because pain and death were so common in their own. This set a low threshold for any practice that had a chance of bringing them an advantage, even if the price was the lives of others. And if the ancients believed...

Good evening.  Or a fine morning to you, whatever the case may be.   I am working on a project in my spare time.  Some of the data I am collecting might make for good blog posts. Anyway, there are a few things whose trajectory I’d like to measure historically.  I have come up ideas for most of them, but there are a few for which I wouldn’t mind if somebody had a better idea than the one I came up with.  Here are the ones that are troubling me.  From colonial...