The Angry Bear

February JOLTS report showed a pandemic still in control Yesterday morning’s JOLTS report for February showed that the pandemic was still in control of the numbers.This report has only a 20 year history, and so includes only two prior recoveries. In those recoveries:  first, layoffs declinedsecond, hiring rosethird, job openings rose and voluntary quits increased, close to simultaneouslyThe recovery from the worst of the pandemic almost one...

Good Signs On Renewing US-Iran JCPOA Nuclear Deal  One should probably not get too optimistic yet, although I have been getting quite worried about it, but a report in today;s New York Times seems to indicate that via the rather indirect negotiations going on in Vienna the US and Iran may have worked out a mutually acceptable path of actions that will lead to both nations getting back into compliance with the JCPOA, which the US pulled out of for...

The Hippie Dog Whistle Work Ethic Silent-Majority Counter-Offensive Following up on my last post, I was searching for coverage of Ronald Reagan’s infamous “strapping young buck” comment from 1976 and found this wonderful commentary by Ian Haney López on Bill Moyers’s show. [embedded content] In his book, Dog Whistle Politics, López mentions the “work ethic” angle several times. The narratives promoted alike by the ethnic turn and...

How To Estimate “Rational” Market Expectations Of Future Inflation  I am not a fan of rational expectations, hence the quotation marks around “rational” in the subject head here.  Nevertheless I have become aware thanks to some posts at Econbrowser by the intrepid Menzie Chinn that the usual way this has been measured and reported by most people needs to be modified, with the understanding of this only developing quite recently.  This came from a...

Coronavirus dashboard for April 5: the problematic cases of Chile . . . and Michigan As you probably already know, the news on the vaccination front continues to be good, as the US is now administering on average over 3 million doses a day – and still climbing. At this rate of improvement, every adult in the US could be vaccinated by Memorial Day at the end of next month. One bit of not so good news is that the percentage of seniors who have...

I bookmarked a prediction about the coronavirus by supply-sider Scott Grannis one year ago …  As I mention from time to time, I read a number of economic observers with whose opinions I usually strongly disagree, partly because it is good to consider other points of view, and partly because some compile excellent and interesting data, even if I disagree with their conclusions about what the data means. The “Calafia Beach Pundit,” Scott Grannis,...

American plutocracy in two simple graphs; plus, when will wage growth bottom? The JOLTS report for February comes out later this morning; I may post on it later or tomorrow. In the meantime, here are updates on several graphs I used to run during the last expansion in order to examine how shared out (or not) economic growth was. First, here is a graph comparing corporate profits adjusted for inflation, and total nonsupervisory wages, also...

Tags: open thread

The “Work Ethic” Hoax The story has been told that Martin Luther invented the doctrine of the “calling” and that John Calvin (“my friends call me Jean”) intensified it with his doctrine of predestination. Subsequent pastoral literature softened the predestination blow with the Protestant ethic that working hard and succeeding would show that you were one of the elect. Max Weber told that story.  It was, of course, a fable. But that is beside...