After the US report on Q2… Angry Bear and credit market weakness in the eurozone, Rebecca takes a look at the retail side of the economy: Retail sales in Germany and Spain were reported last week for the month of June. On a working-day and not-seasonally adjusted basis, real retail sales fell 7.0% on the […]

by Mike Kimel Observations From the Past 3.5 Years Being alive in the past 3.5 years provides the following lessons: 1. Significant elements of the government, influenced to one or another degree by private sector lobbying and contributions, have done a poor job at leading the country.2. Significant elements of the financial industry, influenced to […]

Rebecca takes note of credit growth in many of the Euro countries and notes indications of continued deteriorating macro economies in Newsneconomics: Today the ECB released details on monetary aggregates for the euro area. According to the statement on the asset side of the consolidated balance sheet of the euro area monetary financial institutions (MFIs): […]

by Mike Kimel Why Economists (On Average) are Terrible Forecasters My colleague, Rebecca Wilder, had a post at her site entitled Economists are terrible forecasters – why trust them anyway?. The reason why economists as a general rule are lousy forecasters is obvious: there are no penalties to being wildly wrong. Prominent examples abound. Dow […]

by Mike Kimel Revisiting the Cactus Theory of Development Tyler Cowen links to this paper by this paper by Allen, Murphy and Schneider (warning, PDF!!). Cowen notes: It is a common view that North America had to play catch-up, but the extensive data sets in this paper suggest that North American wages were up to […]

Rebecca Wilder has shifted to publishing her insightful articles on Europe back to her Newsneconomics platform, but will continue to publish on US topics and US/Europe connections on Angry Bear. I think that the shift is smart…the audience for Angry Bear is focused more on the US and as the election cycle is already quite […]