Why I’m Not Going to Properly Review “The People’s Republic of Wal-Mart” I’ve been thinking about alternatives to capitalism for a long time now. I’ve taught several courses on the topic and plan eventually to write up what I think I’ve learned, so naturally I was intrigued by the new book, The People’s Republic of Wal-Mart: […]
Gas prices fail to ignite overall inflation in April, but real wages flat so far for 2019 The consumer price index rose +0.3% in April, just as in March mainly as a result of a big monthly increase in gas prices. This is actually a surprisingly small increase because, as I pointed out last month, […]
Are initial jobless claims showing a re-assertion of an underlying weak economic trend? I don’t normally comment on initial jobless claims, but I’m following them with particular interest at this point. Here’s why. Last spring the long leading indicators were still at least weakly positive. I saw growth ahead through Q1 of this year, and […]
The real trade deficit ( million 2012 $) increased from $81,558 in February to $ 82,054 in March. The March observation was between the January and February data points so it was not large enough to generate a significant change in imports 0.58 percentage point contribution to first quarter real GDP growth. In the […]
Econospeak (Barkley Rosser, pgl, Peter Dorman, Tom Walker) is in the financial section along with Bonddad blog (New Deal democrat) and Capital Ebbs and Flows (Joseph Joyce), and I am proud to say have a direct connection to Angry Bear (under general blogs…). Dear Dan, I wanted to let you know that your blog, Angry Bear Blog has been featured in the Top […]
(Dan here…Lifted from comments at Spencer’s SP 500 PE) PGL comments: 1. It is strike day for Lyft and Uber. Uber’s IPO is estimated to be at $90 billion which strikes me as way overpriced. Why? Net revenue is only $7.9 billion whereas operating costs are $12 billion for the latest reported year. Their net […]
March JOLTS report: Hiring and discharges show signs of late cycle deceleration The JOLTS report on labor is noteworthy and helpful because it breaks down the jobs market into a more granular look at hiring, firing, and voluntary quits. Its drawback is that the data only goes back less than 20 years, so from the […]
Iran: An Unfortunate Anniversary And Getting Worse It was a year ago today that President Trump removed the United States from the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran as well as Russia, China, UK, France, Germany, and the EU, under the auspices of the UN Security Council. According to IAEA inspectors, Iran was fulfilling its part […]
Based on the 5 May 2019 close the S&P 500 PE on trailing operating earnings is 18.25. That places it at the bottom of my fair value band that is based largely on long term treasury bond yields. We can each have out own theories, but it appears to be that the market is correcting […]
The National Bureau of Economic Research has highlighted two studies. (hat tip Spencer England) U.S. Consumers Have Borne the Brunt of the Current Trade War Recent tariff increases are unprecedented in the post-World War II era in terms of breadth, magnitude, and the sizes of the countries involved. In 2018, the United States imposed tariffs […]