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Hi from Marxloh! I’m finding myself with junior in Marloh (to watch Schalke ’04)and it happens to be the most steampunk city I’ve ever been. It is part of Duisberg, a city inside the ‘Ruhrgebiet’, the German equivalent of the USA rust belt except that it’s not rusty but Europe’s largest steelhub (according to a sign along the road). Marxloh, which became a suburb for labourers can nowadays really be called Little Turkey (with capitals. It’s population increased from 352 in 1895 to 35.872...

Up, though less then expected. Nothing here to suggest any kind of economic acceleration: Highlights New home sales have lost some traction and it’s not because of tightening supply. At 555,000, January’s annualized pace came in more than 20,000 below the Econoday consensus and includes a big downward revision, not to December which is 1,000 lower at 535,000, but the cycle high in November which has been cut by 23,000 to 575,000. This report is one of the most volatile on...

from Lars Syll In opening the conference, Frank Morris mentioned his disappointment or disillusionment – which many others share – that the analytical success of the 1960s didn’t survive that decade. I think we all knew, even back in the 1960s, that as Geof put it, “inflation doesn’t wait for full employment.” These days inflation doesn’t even seem to care if full employment is going along on the trip … The question is: what are the possible responses that economists and economics can...

CPAC had a gathering of Republican Governors today. As Jennifer Hayden (@Scout_Finch) on Twitter noted, the Brownback/Walker/etc. panel was called “How to ruin your state’s economy with one easy tax cut.” So naturally my thoughts shifted to the one way blowing up your state’s economy could be ameliorated: if some unearned windfall occurred. Could a Legislature be saved from itself? Lo and behold, the PowerBall jackpot was won by a ticket in Lafayette, IN,...

Action! ‘the campaign to demand that the ECB publish the legal opinion it commissioned on whether its closure of Greece’s banks in 2015 was… legal’. Sign! Europe is waking up to its gargantuan, awkward and 100% home made bad private debts problem. Any solution requires writing down hundreds of billions of debt. Michael Hudson on ‘clean sheet’ debt policies in Mesopotamia. Fun fact: cuneiform records show that clerks had to master compound interest calculations. Low interest policies of...

In the last few months I have gotten accused of racism a few times at this blog. I don’t think I am misrepresenting my accusers by stating that their claim is based primarily because of my views on a) immigration and b) the differences between the economic performance of different countries. The two issues actually collapse into one. I have stated repeatedly that I believe that culture is a key factor affecting the difference in economic outcomes (and many...

from David Ruccio Greece is a perfect example of how to turn a bad economic situation into something even worse. As Reuters reports,  Rescue funds from the European Union and International Monetary Fund saved Greece from bankruptcy, but the austerity and reform policies the lenders attached as conditions have helped to turn recession into a depression. As a result, the poverty rate in Greece almost doubled (between 2008 and 2015), rising from 11.2 percent to 22.2 percent. And average...

For nearly a half a century, from 1947 to 1996, real GDP and real Net Worth of Households and Non-profit Organizations (in 2009 dollars) both increased at a compound annual rate of a bit over 3.5%. GDP growth, in fact, was just a smidgen faster — 0.016% — than  growth of Net Household Worth. From 1996 to 2015, GDP grew at a compound annual rate of 2.3% while Net Worth increased at the rate of 3.6%. Responding to an editorial in the New York Times, Jared...

Down again, and these are seasonally adjusted: Highlights Purchase applications for home mortgages fell a seasonally adjusted 3 percent in the February 17 week, while refinancing applications decreased by 1 percent to the lowest level since January. Unadjusted, the purchase index rose 2 percent from the prior week and was up 10 percent from the year ago week, which included the President’s Day holiday. The refinancing share of mortgage activity continued to decline and was...