Tag Archives: Uncategorized

According to the most recent updates, the Oroville dam in California (the highest dam in the USA) might be on the point of collapsing (more precisely: the emergency overflow might collapse). According to Piet Dircke, an engineer of Arcadis (which since 2010 is involved with Californian watermanagement in the San Fransisco-Stockton-Sacramento triangle) there is one overriding reason why this might happen: failing maintenance maintenance. “The overflow should have been replaced 10 years...

Lina Kahn wrote an excellent totally Veblenian analysis of Amazone and anti-trust policies. Or: why Chicago style price based anti-trust analysis does not work and we have to look at the nature and structure of the brave new internet markets. “Journal of Economic Issues: 50th Anniversary Editor’s Choice Collection”. Until 10 march: ungated. Quite a bit about the nature and structure of markets. According to the ECB their QE policy was an astounding success. It got Southern European...

from Lars Syll There was an unusual degree of consensus among economists about what would happen if Britain voted for Brexit in the referendum on June 23 last year. The language used by the International Monetary Fund was typical: It expressed fears of an “abrupt reaction,” adding that this “may have already begun” … What happened instead was that Britain enjoyed the best growth of any major advanced economy in 2016 … Andy Haldane compared the pitfalls of economic prediction to the single...

by New Deal democrat Four measures of wage growth: prospects for further meaningful wage growth are dimming In the last several years, I have written a number of posts documenting the stagnation in average and median wages, followed by their improvement due to the steep decline in gas prices, for example here and here.  Since bottoming a year ago, gas prices have turned positive YoY, most recently up about 25%. Q4 2016 data on wages has been released, giving...

from David Ruccio It is extraordinary that the hegemonic economic theory in the world today—neoclassical economics—still lacks an adequate theory of the firm. It beggars belief both because neoclassical economics is the predominant theory that is taught to hundreds of thousands of students every year and used to make sense of the world and formulate policy in countless think thanks and government agencies and because the firm (or enterprise or corporation) is one of the central...

from Mark Weisbrot President Trump is unlikely to fulfill his dream of forcing Mexico to pay for his proposed wall along the United States’ southern border. If it is built, it would almost certainly be US taxpayers footing the bill, with some estimates as high as $50 billion. But it’s worth taking a step back to look at the economics of US-Mexican relations, to see how immigration from Mexico even became an issue in US politics that someone like Trump could try to use to his advantage....

- by New Deal democrat Gas prices and likely January inflation to continue the stall in real wage growth A big relatively unnoticed concern over the last year has been the end of deflation due to the end of the decline in gas prices.  Coupled with really tepid wage growth, this is going to affect consumers, who are 70% of the US economy. Gas prices aren’t a headwind yet.  They have increased about 25% YoY.  In the past, it has taken a 40% or more spike YoY to...

from Lars Syll The 2017 OECD Economic Survey of Sweden — presented today in Stockholm by OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría and Sweden’s Minister of Finance Magdalena Andersson — points out that income inequality in Sweden has been rising since the 1990s. I would say that what we see happen in Sweden is deeply disturbing. The rising inequality is outrageous – not the least since it has to a large extent to do with income and wealth increasingly being concentrated in the hands of a very...

Trumped up expectations fading: No telling why our new President changed his mind on this one. Might have something to do with a kosher house being a two china policy… ;) White House confirms Trump’s agreement to honor ‘One China’ policy By Everett Rosenfeld Feb 10 (CNBC) — A White House statement confirmed a Thursday night report that President Donald Trump had agreed to honor China’s “One China” policy in his first call with the country’s president.“President Donald J....

from Peter Radford While I was checking the inner debates the Republicans are having about health care I came across this quote [in an article written by Tierney Sneed in TPM] from Representative David Brat, an extreme right winger: “When it comes to how much you want to park in the HSAs for providing catastrophic care, that, when it comes, to the safety net, we have to find the Milton Friedman way of doing that,” Brat said. “The Price bill would do tax credits. I am not a fan of those...