Tag Archives: US EConomics

Scenes from the June employment report: consumption leads employment, goods vs. services edition  – by New Deal democrat No big new economic news today, so let’s take a more in-depth look at some of the information from Friday’s employment report. Today I’m going to focus on the division between goods and services. As I’ve written many times in the past, consumption leads employment. Typically I have shown that via real retail sales. The...

Weekly Indicators for July 3 – 7 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. A real-time daily update of inflation (based on millions of prices posted at internet sales sites among other things) has become available, and has been added to the array of coincident indicators. The complete array remains consistent with very slow growth that has not tipped over into contraction. But despite the...

Differences between Japan and the US Debt. Explain how Japan can manage twice the debt/GDP with no problems but the US is headed to a crisis. Or is the issue really about unnecessary deficit spending due to tax breaks skewed to upper income brackets? Open Thread July 2, 2023 Partisan SCOTUS, Angry Bear, angry bear blog Tags: Open Thread July 9 2023...

June jobs report: deceleration continues, with weakest private jobs sector growth since 2020  – by New Deal democrat My focus remains on whether jobs growth continues to decelerate, and whether the leading indicators, particularly manufacturing and construction jobs, as well as the unemployment rate (which leads going into recessions) have meaningfully deteriorated. In May the headlines on employment were decent if slightly weak, but hid...

MIdyear update: the state of the big monthly coincident indicators  – by New Deal democrat Let’s take a look at the important monthly coincident indicators that the NBER has indicated they weight most heavily, along with quarterly real GDP, in gauging whether the economy is expanding or contracting. Remember, a recession isn’t actually defined by 2 quarters of negative GDP, but rather by a significant decline in jobs, income, sales, and...

How the Super Rich Are Killing Social Security, Robert Reich Blog, Robert Reich Since Angry Bear has a well known expert on Social Security in the name of Dale Coberly, I like to post other commentary on the topic. Robert Reich suggests increasing the salary limit well beyond 2023’s $160, 200 cap. He proposes eliminating the cap over $250,000 on salary and investments. Here’s the real reason Social Security is in danger that nobody’s talking...

May JOLTS report: continued decelerating trend, but still extremely positive  – by New Deal democrat Let me start out with the statement that has been my touchstone for the JOLTS report for the last year or more: for the last several years, the jobs market has been a game of “reverse musical chairs,” where there are always more chairs than participants. Those employers whose chairs weren’t filled had to increase their wage and/or...

“Generic drugs are approved only after a rigorous review by FDA and after a set period of time that the brand product has been on the market exclusively. A generic drug is a medication with the exact same active ingredient as the brand-name drug.” It is not unusual to buy generic versions of a particular product. It will not be labeled as the same product name. I can not take certain drugs and am confined to drugs which are more costly. I started...

Initial jobless claims: moving closer to a red flag warning  – by New Deal democrat Initial claims for jobless benefits rose 12,000 last week to 248,000. The 4 week average declined -3,500 to 253,250. With a one week lag, continued claims declined -13,000 to 1.20 million: More importantly for forecasting purposes, initial claims are up 17.1% YoY. The more important 4 week average is up 18.1%, and continuing claims are up 27.0%: This is...

The Medicare Advantage Quality Bonus Program, Urban Institute, Laura Skopec and Robert A. Berenson The following is an introduction and a portion of a very readable report to which the link can be found at the end of this introduction. The findings are similar as to what Kip Sullivan and others have been reporting all along. To which I have reported and confirmed on Angry Bear on numerous occasions. The one liner finding to this being, the Quality...