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

Initial claims, temporary staffing point to weaker May jobs report

Initial claims, temporary staffing point to weaker May jobs report  – by New Deal democrat As I’ve noted a few times recently, I’m paying additional attention to the weekly jobless claims numbers, partly because I suspected that the late Easter this year resulted in some residual seasonality (which I think has been demonstrated), and partly […]

Emoluments As Grounds For Impeachment

Emoluments As Grounds For Impeachment I have said this before, but am saying it again.  The clearest grounds for impeaching Donald Trump are not his obstruction of justice on which so much attention is being focused, but in my view his blatant and unequivocal acceptance of emoluments from foreign governments, with this most clearly evident […]

Weekly Indicators for May 20 – 24 at Seeking Alpha

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for May 20 – 24 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The big contradiction between what the yield curve is forecasting, and what most of the rest of the long leading indicators are forecasting, continues.  Meanwhile Trump’s tariff  “policies” are creating chaos in other […]

Yes, Virginia, the government shutdown really did cause a mini-recession

Yes, Virginia, the government shutdown really did cause a mini-recession For the past several months, I have been pounding on the idea that the government shutdown, during which 800,000 jobholders were temporarily laid off without pay, had a much bigger impact on the economy than was originally thought. This morning we get the following graph […]

San Francisco Fed: ease of finding a new job is driving improved labor force participation

San Francisco Fed: ease of finding a new job is driving improved labor force participation This is a surprising result that is worth noting: the San Francisco Fed found that the increase in prime age labor force participation in the past five years has not been due to new people being drawn into the labor […]

Twelve Big Picture bullet points on the economy

Twelve Big Picture bullet points on the economy It’s a really slow week for economic data. Really the only important report is new home sales, which will be released Thursday. I’ve been working on a few things, but they are really information-dense and time-consuming to organize, and because they deal with how long leading indicators […]

Weekly Indicators for May 13 – 17 at Seeking Alpha

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for May 13 – 17 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The stock market’s “tariff tantrum” is driving down interest rates in bonds. We are in a time when government policy decisions – sometimes just passing tweets – are driving winners and losers in […]

Sanctions On Iran Are Hitting Hezbollah

Sanctions On Iran Are Hitting Hezbollah That is the top headline, upper right corner front page, of today’s Washington Post, a quite long article by Liz Sly and Suzan Haidamous.  WaPo has been much criticized by Trump and his supporters for alleged “fake news” critical of his leaving the Iran nuclear deal while Iran was […]

US Library of Congress selects Angry Bear to archive

Dan here…the United States Library of Congress will be archiving and collecting material from Angry Bear. The overall digital archiving project began in ernest since 2013.   Abbie Grotke,  Lead Librarian Web Archiving Team, affirmed the process.  Below are excerpts from the letter of request and the Library website.   The United States Library of Congress […]