The Angry Bear

By Jeff Soplop Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and the Economics of Privacy Cambridge Analytica – the data firm that provided consulting services for the Trump Campaign – has come under intense scrutiny for the firm’s capture and exploitation of vast quantities of user data from Facebook. These practices have added new urgency to questions about how information is collected online and how to protect users’ privacy rights. From The New York Times: “The firm...

Import and export growth and an expanding trade deficit do not need a strong dollar. We have had some discussions about dollar weakness and questions for those of us who expected the federal deficit to lead to a larger current account deficit through a strong dollar. I’ve looked at the data in a different way and now wonder if we really need a change in the dollar to achieve a larger current account deficit.   If you look at real imports and exports you...

Prime age labor force participation: disability and homemaking decline About a year ago I wrote a series of posts on various reasons for the relatively low labor force participation by prime age individuals, and its effect on wages; In my post summing up that study I wrote: A major element of the participation rate is comparison with other alternatives to being in the labor force. Two alternatives to labor participation appear to have had a...

Back when he was a conservative (and didn’t just play one on TV) David Brooks specialized in the ecological inference fallacy. He tried to argue that the Democratic party was the elite party, because Democratic “blue” states are wealthier than red states. He wrote as if all people in blue states were upper middle class as he and all the people he knows are. This is passé. Current conservatives just replace data with prejudice. For example, someone...

Lifted from comments by PGL: The dollar has devalued since Trump became President: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TWEXB Barry Eichengreen has some interesting thoughts here: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/what-explains-dollar-weakness-by-barry-eichengreen-2018-03 “One of the big ones in the circles I frequent is dollar weakness. Between January 2017 and January 2018, the broad effective exchange rate of the dollar fell by 8%,...

by New Deal democrat February update: real wages and real spending Now that we have February inflation, let’s take an updated look at real wages and real spending. First of all, real average hourly wages increased slightly in February, but are still -0.6% under their July peak: But, because the total hours worked surged so much in February, real aggregate wage earnings, which had stalled since July, rose to a new record: If it’s not revised...

(Dan here. Spencer sends this e-mailed post): by Spencer England Real trade balance and 1st Q real GDP growth Figure 1 With the federal deficit jumping from 3.5% to 5% of GDP  the US will be expanding its current account deficit by a like amount.  You can see it in the January trade balance where the real trade balance has expanded from around $60,000 ( real 2009 ) to around $70,000 ( real 2009 )   or 16%.   The real trade deficit is the flip side of the...

Trump on Our Trade Surplus/Deficit With Canada Menzie Chinn listens to the latest from Donald Trump so we don’t have to: And by the way, Canada? They negotiate tougher than Mexico. Trudeau came to see me, he’s a good man, he said we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please. Nice guy, good looking guy. Comes in. Donald we have no trade deficit. He’s very tough. Everyone else, getting killed or whatever. But he’s tough. I said, well...