EconoSpeak

Over at Brad DeLong’s blog jonny bakho adds an interesting comment: How much stimulus did the GWBush tax cuts provide? They came during a recession followed by "jobless recovery" made somewhat better by the housing bubble, then burst big time in 2008. How different would the multiplier be if given to infrastructure repair and broadband extension, investments that create domestic jobs? In a global economy, tax cuts to the investor class are spent globally. Tax cuts for investors can...

The first premise of Adam Smith's famous metaphor about an "invisible hand" leading individuals to promote the public interest, although they intend only private gain, was that there is only so much work to go 'round. That is, Smith assumed there was a certain quantity of work to be done -- a "lump of labor." He didn't tacitly assume it -- he stated it plainly: As the number of workmen that can be kept in employment by any particular person must bear a certain proportion to his capital, so...

For the past year the US has been essentially operating on an Obama-Yellen economy, at least as far as the big macroeconomic policies have been concerned in terms of fiscal and monetary policies.  We saw basically a continuation of what had been seeing in previous years, steady growth with inflation under control.  There was some uptick in wage growth, although that had already started in the previous year.  He has supposedly engaged in a lot of deregulation, but most of it that has gotten a...

Wow!  We have a great controversy!  A squib of a memo by the House Intel Comm has completely devoured the media.  A constitutional crisis!  Egad!  In two weeks, or maybe two months, it will be nothing.  But for now, well, very very very serious. At a minimum it has distracted everybody from Trump'sz gloriously successful State of the Union speech, which was so well received until this distraction that he thinks will bring about the end of that nasty Mueller investigation.However, it now...

According to Focus (last year it was top 100).  For full details see Focus-Economics-Finance-Blogs .  This is non-trivial in that 17 blogs that were on last year are off.  There are 18 new ones, and the total number rose from 100 to 101.  I note that Brian Dowd who runs this has us more accurately described.  We are no longer a finance blog, which was how we were labeled last year.  Now we are a "left-wing" blog.  I am not mentioned personally now (and there is no photo) with nobody...

Lawrence Summers made an interesting comments during a CNBC interview: Former Treasury Secretary and Obama administration economic advisor Larry Summers said Friday that recent employee bonuses are stunts and not reflective of long-term hopes for prosperity that tax cuts are supposed to bring. "I think it's a gimmick," Summers told CNBC's "Squawk Alley." "I think in many cases the firms have to raise wages because labor markets are tight, and so why not curry some favor with the White House...

Maybe yes.In Davos some days ago Treasury Secretary Mnuchin declared that a lower valued dollar would lead to a lower US trade deficit. The dollar promptly fell several percents and various persons and many observers reacted in horror, most prominently former TreasSec Larry Summers.  He did no actually dispute Mnuchin's claim factually, rather he asserted that people holding that position as he did should follow a strong dollar policy and talk it up, that a lower dollar raises prices of...

Josh Marshall listens to Donald Trump so we do not have to: President Trump has been out bragging that “because of my policies” the African-American unemployment rate has dropped to its lowest level ever. This appears to be technically true. But I thought it made sense to give some context for the nonsensical nature of this claim. As you can see, the idea that this is “because of my policies” is a bit hard to square with the actual data. Josh provides the data on the black unemployment...

The following was sent out to the all-faculty-and-staff email list at Evergreen State College today by the chief of campus police.  Some background: The Evergreen State College is abbreviated as TESC and is situated in Thurston County. A faculty member reported that a person phoned her campus phone impersonating a Thurston County Sheriff.  The person advised them to take money out of their account and go to a local store and wire them the money, otherwise they would be arrested.  THIS IS A...

As argued in numerous posts here, we have seen an apparently emerging disconnect between economic conditions and political outcomes in a variety of nations, with anti-immigrant or more generally nationalist or populist parties with authoritarian tendencies gaining strength in many nations despite apparently improving or even largely pretty good economic conditions.  A list of those showing this includes Poland, the US, Germany, UK with the Brexit vote, Austria, Sweden, the Netherlands, and...