Tag Archives: Uncategorized

Energy capex collapsed first, followed by non energy capex about a year later. Question now is whether the Q1 non energy capex recovery continues into Q2. I suspect not. In any case the contribution to growth from energy capex is no longer negative but not all that much as a % of GDP: Tells me we still are experience an obvious lack of aggregate demand. We haven’t even gotten back prior highs and growth of these components has slowed dramatically from where it was before...

You can see how central bank reserve shifting worked to lower the euro vs the dollar. Yes, we need a larger deficit, both short and long term, given current institutional structure that gives powerful incentives to not spend income. Not that the current proposals to do that are my first choice as to specific taxes to cut and expenditures to increase. Nor would I call it pump priming, but instead I’d call it removing fiscal restrictions: Trump: Debt and deficits will rise,...

from Peter Radford I don’t understand why people get upset when I say that economics is a waste of time. I suppose it’s because I don’t make a clear enough difference between economics as a general topic and economics as a formal, mainstream, body of knowledge. It’s the latter that is a waste of time. The former is wonderfully interesting. At its heart economics is a study of human behavior, where that behavior is specific to certain activities. It is thus deeply rooted in psychology, so...

Announcing the New Map of New Deal New YorkTwo years in the making, The Living New Deal’s newest publication, a “Map and Guide to New Deal New York,” highlights nearly 1,000 public works throughout the five boroughs and describes 50 of the city’s notable New Deal buildings, parks, murals, and other sites and artworks. The 18 x 27 inch, multi-color map folds to pocket size, while three inset maps offer walking tours of the New Deal in Central Park, and Midtown and Downtown Manhattan....

from David Ruccio I am quite willing to admit that, based on last Friday’s job report, the Second Great Depression is now over. As regular readers know, I have been using the analogy to the Great Depression of the 1930s to characterize the situation in the United States since late 2007. Then as now, it was not a recession but, instead, a depression. As I explain to my students in A Tale of Two Depressions, the National Bureau of Economic Research doesn’t have any official criteria for...

from Lars Syll The problem of any branch of knowledge is to systematize a set of particular observations in a more coherent form, called hypothesis or ‘theory.’ Two problems must be resolved by those attempting to develop theory: (1) finding agreement on what has been observed; (2) finding agreement on how to systematize those observations. In economics, there would be more agreement on the second point than on the first. Many would agree that using the short-hand rules of mathematics is...

Trumped up expectations fading only slowly, as confirmed by stocks, etc: A glimmer of hope seems to have faded: HighlightsThere’s plenty of help-wanted signs but still too few qualified applicants. Job openings in March totaled 5.743 million, up from a revised 5.682 million in February and well ahead of hirings which totaled 5.260 million. Professional & business services, where employers often turn to first when they can’t fill staff themselves, shows a strong rise...

from Dean Baker There are two enormous myths about global warming. One is that dealing with it is optional. The other is that the measures needed to slow the process will devastate the economy. Neither is true. On the first point, we are already seeing major changes in weather that are almost certainly related to global warming, both in the United States and around the world. In the United States, we are seeing rising water levels eroding beachfront property all along our coast lines. We...

Is there a neo-classical theory of immiseration? Below is the marvelous Chapman hours of labor diagram (follow the link for a more detailed explanation). It looks complicated but it really only contains four curves representing, roughly, long-term and short-term productivity, income and fatigue. But there is more to it than Chapman realized or that I have previously noticed. The context for this diagram is William Stanley Jevons’s discussion of work...