Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Fucking With The Football

That would be the nuclear football, the one that a President of the United States can use to destroy all human life on the planet with by pushing some buttons.  It turns out there is a second one, a backup, one that is kept near the backup President. That would be the Vice President. So […]

Jobless claims: huge upward revisions for the second week in a row

Jobless claims: huge upward revisions for the second week in a row The story this week is the repeated massive upward revisions to last week’s numbers This week, on a unadjusted basis, new jobless claims declined by 5,702 to 862,351. Seasonally adjusted claims increased by 13,000 to 861,000 (meaning last week’s original number of 793,000 […]

Blockbuster January retail sales presage gains in jobs

Blockbuster January retail sales presage gains in jobs (Dan here…late posting) [NOTE: I’ll report separately on industrial production later this morning. Real retail sales is my bellwether for the health of the consumer. And after 3 months of declines, we got a huge upturn in January. Before adjusting for inflation, retail sales jumped 5.3% – […]

Covid 19 One Dose or Two IV

Angrybearblog December 22,2020 “Eyeballing, the first shot looks 80-90% effective.” (Moderna) and “my guess is that the first shot was about 90% effective over this period.” (Pfizer). Angrybearblog December 24,2020 New England Journal of Medicine February 17 2021 We used documents submitted to the Food and Drug Administration2 to derive the vaccine efficacy beginning from 2 […]

Industrial production continues strong growth

Industrial production continues strong growth If real retail sales (reported on in the prior post) is the best proxy for the health of the consumer, Industrial production, the King of Coincident Indicators, is the same for production.  And the news there was also very good. Overall production rose 0.9% in December, and the manufacturing component […]

It’s by Design: Texas’ Electrical Mess

Something is funky with our comment function. They are showing up at the WP site, just not showing here today. Though, sometimes you might see them, then not. So, leave a comment. We’ll get it happening. By now, you are aware that the problem Texas is having is because they failed to build their system […]

The Explanation for the 2020 Mail Delay? Louis DeJoy

Steve Hutkins at Save The Post Office, The 2020 Mail Delays: Stats & Charts Preface The inventor of MRPII, Oliver Wight, coined a term for management deliberately obstructing the implementation of MRPII calling them “Cement Heads.” In Louis DeJoy’s case, rather than work with today’s postal system; DeJoy is deliberately sabotaging it with his changes. […]

On the effects of COVID vaccination, Israel is the bellwether

On the effects of COVID vaccination, Israel is the bellwether  I’m beginning to see some clickbait reports of COVID diagnoses after two doses of the vaccine, together with breathless reporting by some RW’ers and LW’ers that the vaccines are not very effective. I’m here to tell you to beware of these headlines and reports. For […]