EconoSpeak

It has not been officially reported by the North Korean govt, but long running rumors are now being reported by various  serious media that Trump's big pal Kim Jong Un has recently killed the top 5 officials of his govt who set up his  failed summit with US President Trump.According to sources I watch there has been a massive crop failure this year in the Democratic Peoples' Republic (DRK). The big issue there is if the local, semi-allowed private markets in ag will save the population from...

Senator Grassley rebukes the latest idiocy from the White House: President Trump dropped a trade war bomb on Thursday when he announced his intent to put in place new and harsh tariffs on goods from Mexico until the “illegal Immigration problem is remedied.” And among the many worried, negative reactions was one from Senate Finance Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, in a strongly worded statement. “Trade policy and border security are separate issues. This is a misuse of presidential tariff...

The rumor that China might play its "rare earth card" was the rumor today that helped push down both stock and oil markets according to a variety of reports.  The trigger for this seems to have been a visit on May 26 by China's president, Xi  Jinping, to a rare earth facility, along with some rumbling statements associated with that visit.  They may not do it, but the possibility of blocking exports to the US of exports of rare earth metals shows that China has potential weapons if Trump...

Here’s something I posted over on Andrew Gelman’s wonderful blog: I read Alive and thought it unknowingly made a very powerful point about decision theory, that you always have to balance the risks of action against the risks of inaction. The plane was stuck in snow on a slope that led down to a valley that was partially inhabited. Yes, the immediate survivors could not see this, and sending a party down the slope seemed very dangerous (which it was), so they delayed for months. Meanwhile,...

A little over a year ago Mark Perry wrote this nonsense: The chart above (thanks to Olivier Ballou) is an update of a chart we produced last year about this time, and shows the percent changes since January 1997 in the prices of selected consumer goods and services, along with the increase in average hourly earnings in this version … Blue lines = prices subject to free market forces. Red lines = prices subject to regulatory capture by government. Food and drink is debatable either way....

I have said this before, but am saying it again.  The clearest grounds for impeaching Donald Trump are not his obstruction of justice on which so much attention is being focused, but in my view his blatant and unequivocal acceptance of emoluments from foreign governments, with this most clearly evident at his hotel in Washington, with these emoluments the basis of lawsuits by the governments of Maryland and D.C. going forward slowly.  But somehow none  in Congress pushing impeachment have...

This has been reported by Juan Cole.  Apparently Supreme Jurisprudent, Ali Khamenei of Iran in a speech to a large number of university students has seriously denounced President Hassan Rouhani for having negotiated the JCPOA nuclear agreement with the United States and other powers.  During the negotiations Khamenei played a mixed role, raising doubts about the negotiations, but allowing them to continue and for the agreement to be adopted and implemented.  As all know, Iran has until now...

The U.K. think tank Autonomy has issued a report calling for much shorter working weeks, "The Ecological Limits of Work: on carbon emissions, carbon budgets and working time," which is featured in a Guardian article published today, "Much shorter working weeks needed to tackle climate crisis – study."  People across Europe will need to work drastically fewer hours to avoid disastrous climate heating unless there is a radical decarbonising of the economy, according to a study.  The...

Tierney Sneed reports on Trump’s latest obstruction of justice: The Justice Department on Monday issued a legal opinion claiming that Congress could not compel former White House Counsel Don McGahn to testify about special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. The opinion was released not long after reports that the White House was planning to instruct McGahn to not comply with a House subpoena that he testify at a Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday. The legal opinion can be found here and...

That is the top headline, upper right corner front page, of today's Washington Post, a quite long article by Liz Sly and Suzan Haidamous.  WaPo has been much criticized by Trump and his supporters for alleged "fake news" critical of his leaving the Iran nuclear deal while Iran was compliant and not only reimposing the sanctions put on by Obama to get Iran to the negotiating table for that deal, but adding more and yet more leading to a military escalation that may have peaked.  So, now maybe...