EconoSpeak

From the AFL-CIO website:PRIORITIES OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT TO ADDRESS THE CORONAVIRUS: PROTECT FRONT-LINE WORKERS Streamline approaches for allocating and distributing personal protective equipment to working people in greatest need. Issue a workplace safety standard to protect front-line workers and other at-risk workers from infectious diseases. Provide workplace controls, protocols, training and personal protective equipment. Provide clear, protective federal guidance for different groups...

Greg Mankiw has posted a suggestion for delivering money to people that targets the benefit to those who need it the most.  The idea is clever:1. Pay people the benefit B.  (This could be spread over many weeks or months.)  Everyone gets the same B.2. Next year at tax time, compute the ratio r Y(2020)/Y(2019), the ratio of each filer’s 2020 income, net of B, to their 2019 income and capped at 1.  Impose a surcharge of rB on tax liability.  This way people would pay back a proportion of B...

One consequence of the emerging global Covid-19 recession has been that it has helped push world oil prices down from the $60-70 per barrel range near rhw beginning of 2020 to $23.12 for West Texas Crude and $29.00 for Brent Crude, levels not seen since the end of 2008. But part of why that decline has been so sharp and deep has been thet Saudi Arabia has increased production while Russia has kept up production, despite the Saudis demanding that they cut production.  So there is an oil price...

Ordinarily, I would give some sort of summary of the Big Idea I am referencing. In this case, I will link to the essay, Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance What the Next 18 Months Can Look Like, if Leaders Buy Us Time, by Tomas Pueyo and say you must read it to get what I am talking about. O.K., in simplest terms, Pueyo outlines what is likely to happen with a do-nothing strategy, a mitigation strategy and a third strategy that he calls the "hammer and the dance."Long story short:...

Incomes are collapsing throughout the economy, and both businesses and individuals face a crisis in meeting fixed payments they can’t control.  The most direct step we can take is to temporarily suspend these payment obligations.Suppose the government were to announce that, starting immediately, all stipulated debt and real estate rental payments were to be suspended for all borrowers and renters.  This moratorium could have an ending date of, say, two months in the future, with the option...

The starting point for all of what follows is that government, if it has the will to act, is currently in the driver’s seat.  Much of the private sector is facing a terrifying confluence of crunches: supply breakdowns, demand falling off a cliff for many goods and services, and a looming shortfall of liquidity to service debt.  A wide swath of business is on the ropes and needs a rescue from government.  This puts the power in our hands if we can wield it.  Of course, with Republican...

Before I note perhaps the most irresponsible comment from Donald Trump today, let me note I strongly support research into finding an effective treatment. Pardon me for saying the obvious as certain Trump cheerleaders are not accusing people like me as wanting massive deaths just to make their fearless “leader” look bad. Of course, these Trump sycophants have a long history of being utterly disgusting so let’s move on by noting a great post from Robert Waldmann: I think that it is important...

Yesterday my wife Marina and I mt with our personal attorney, a close friend also, to fix  some loose ends in our wills due to some recent family deaths, as well the current situation.  He also happens to sit on the Harrisonburg City Council, as well as having been Mayor for awhile and a longtime member of the city Planning Commission, someone whose competence we have great respect for.  Anyway, he noted that on April 14 the City Manager is to present a proposed budget to the City Council,...

Quite possibly.In today's Washington Post, p. A8, Robin Dixon and David L. Stern report that President Voloymyr Zelensky has removed anti-corruption General Prosecutor Ruslan Ryaboshapka and is replacing him with Uryna Venedkiktova.  She is associated with the oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, who has long been the main backer of President Zelensky and who had his control of a major bank removed previously.  Observers have long viewed Zelensky''s connection with Kolomoisky as a danger point in his...

On 3/13/20 in Foreign Policy Focus, Ariel Gold and Medea Benjamin argue that to improve the global coronavirus problem, sanctions on Iran should be lifted, quite aside from the fact they should never have been imposed in the first place as Iran was adhering to the JCPOA nuclear deal.The effect of the sanctions has been to tank the Iranian economy, including its health care sector, much worsening the coronavirus epidemic in Iran, thus making it more likely to spread to the global pandemic....