EconoSpeak

The self-proclaimed "Caliph" of Da'esh/ISIL/ISIS, Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarri, who took the name Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has blown himself up after US special forces successfully attacked his compound in Idlib province of Syria near the Turkish border after a US military dog attacked him. (His nom de guerre was chosen for its links to historical caliphs, the leaders of global Sunni Islam after the death of the Prophet Muhammed supposedly in his place, with Abu Bakr being the first such...

Here’s the graphic, widely used to explain why equity outcomes require unequal treatment of different people. Benjamin Studebaker (hat tip Naked Capitalism) doesn’t like it at all: “I hate it so much.”  But his complaints, about the way the graphic elides classic debates in political theory, strike me as being too redolent of grad school obsessions.  The graphic is not trying to advance one academic doctrine over another; it just makes a simple case for compensatory policy.  I agree in a...

Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I should probably write about the "big successs" we have in Northeastern Syria thanks to Vladdie Putin talking the Turkish president, Erdogan, into holding back some from his nation's invasion of Kurdish territory.  But, heck, it is still hard to know what is going on there.  So instead I am going to look at events happening in Lebanon mostly under the radar, but that are both connected to the broader war in Syria as Lebanon has been challenged by receiving over a million...

How to say in Latin that our Secretary of State is pompous and dishonest as it gets? Oh yea – if one says “quid pro quo” in English, it never happened. These unbelievable stupid excuses for denying what is plainly true – that Trump extorted dirt on Democrats from Ukraine by withholding military aid – is insulting as they are treating us like “chumps” to paraphrase Leon Penatta. But even more insulting is this: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo fiercely criticized the House impeachment inquiry,...

Yes, Trump really said that.  The Syrian Kurds, who have been where they are about to be ethnically cleansed out of, are welcoming "the ultimate solution," just like Jews in you know where were welcoming "the final solution."  Of course they must accept this because they are "no angels," "communists," and "worse then ISIL." So much for a "post-socialist" Bookchinite cooperative system.  But, hey, they are all so fortunate to have "the ultimate solution."   What else is there to say?Barkley...

Lots of people have been huffing and puffing about whether or not the US economy will go into a recession in the near future, with Menzie Chinn and Jim Hamilton at Econbrowser saying it is now about 50-50 whether or not the US economy will go into recession by the end of 2020.   I do not have a horse in that race, but I am struck that a new odd phenomenon has recently appeared in the US economy, a split between sectors regarding their performance that recently seems to be increasing.The...

I don’t think anyone was surprised by this year’s “Nobel” prize in economics, which went to three American-based specialists in the design of on-the-ground experiments in low income countries, Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer.  I think the award has merit, but it is important to keep in mind the severe limitations of the work being honored.The context for this year’s prize is the long, mostly frustrating history of anti-poverty projects in the field of development...

I have almost never watched through a Trump speech to one of his rallies, but I was curious what he would say at the first one after the impeachment inquiry officially started, which he held a few days ago in Minneapolis, supposedly trying to take MN away from the Dems in 2020.  I missed the opening, but listened to all of it after that. Much of it was just boilerplate stuff he says all the time, much of it blatant falsehoods, but whart we have heard.  News reports focused on his especially...

Trump's stonewalling on impeachment is the top story, snore.  Lower down and more important is Trump allowing Turkey to attack the Kurds in Syria with the support of Russia. Even GOP senators do not like this and ISIS fighters may get out. But, heck, those will go to Europe, and unlike the Btis and Canadians, the Kurds did not help us out in Normandy in WW II.  And, probably most important, Trump has major business interests in Turkey.However, much less reported (although covered by David...

The abstract for "Does Medicare Coverage Improve Cancer Detection and Mortality Outcomes?" by Rebecca Mary Myerson, Reginald Tucker-Seeley, Dana Goldman and Darius N. Lakdawalla: Medicare is the largest government insurance program in the United States, providing coverage for over 60 million people in 2018. This paper analyzes the effects of Medicare insurance on health for a group of people in urgent need of medical care – people with cancer. We used a regression discontinuity design to...