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Tag Archives: Uncategorized

The half that will never be told. . .

from David Ruccio Certainly not by mainstream economists—not if they continue to defend their turf and to attack the new literature on “Slavery’s Capitalism” with the vehemence they’ve recently displayed. It makes me want to forget I ever obtained my Ph.D. in economics and the fact that I’ve spent much of my life working in and around the discipline. A recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education [ht: ja] highlights Edward E. Baptist’s novel book, The Half Has Never Been Told...

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Oil comments, Trump talk

At this point in time higher oil prices are an unambiguous negative for the US economy. The higher prices will drain low income consumer $, and while incomes for higher end consumers with oil related income will benefit, I don’t see them increasing spending as fast as the low end cuts back. Also, with the US importing more oil and at higher prices, incomes of foreign oil producers will benefit but, again, I don’t see them buying as many more US goods and services. And oil...

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P6: Historical context for Keynes

from Asad Zaman This post, 6th in a sequence about Re-Reading Keynes, continues to borrow heavily from Brian S. Ferguson, “Lectures on John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1): Chapter One, Background and Historical Setting” University of Guelph Department of Economics and Finance Discussion Paper No. 2013-06. However the first three paragraphs are mine. Distinguishing between ideologies and science: Deduction: According to Lionel Robbins, economic theory...

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Bewildering Irish GDP data once again (but employment data are sound)

The new quarterly  Irish GDP statistics are in. They are, again, bewildering. Ireland grows because investments are down…. I’ll explain. On the one hand we read: ‘Overall total domestic demand declined by 1.8% in Q3 2016 compared with Q2 2016.’. This decline was led by a 17,8% decline in investments. On the other hand we read: “The National Accounts results show an increase of 4.0% in GDP and an increase of 3.2% in GNP in Q3 2016 compared with Q2 2016“ A heft growth of GDP in combination...

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Disagreeing with Paul Krugman: His friends probably do vote against the interest of the working class (white and other)

from Dean Baker Paul Krugman told readers that intellectual types like him tend to vote for progressive taxes and other measures that benefit white working class people. This is only partly true. People with college and advanced degrees tend to be strong supporters of recent trade deals [I’m including China’s entry to the WTO] that have been a major factor in the loss of manufacturing jobs in the last quarter century, putting downward pressure on the pay of workers without college...

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Insane inequality

from David Ruccio Income inequality continues to grow in the United States—which represents the very definition of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”   According to recent data by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, and Gabriel Zucman, from 1979 through 2006, the share of pre-tax income going to the bottom 50 percent of U.S. households fell from an already-low 20.1 percent to an even-lower 13.5 percent. During that same period, the top 1...

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Statistical significance is not real-world significance

from Lars Syll As shown over and over again when significance tests are applied, people have a tendency to read ‘not disconfirmed’ as ‘probably confirmed.’ Standard scientific methodology tells us that when there is only say a 10 % probability that pure sampling error could account for the observed difference between the data and the null hypothesis, it would be more ‘reasonable’ to conclude that we have a case of disconfirmation. Especially if we perform many independent tests of our...

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Michigan survey, Inventories

Post election euphoria? In any case, as per the chart, historically it doesn’t tend to stay this high for long: Highlights Post-election confidence continues to build, lifting consumer sentiment by more than 4 points to a 98.0 level that hits the very outside of the Econoday range and is 1 tenth away from the index’s recovery peak hit last year. Consumers specifically cite expectations of new economic policies as the biggest positive. A rise in the current conditions...

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Italy’s political troubles have deep economic roots

from Mark Weisbrot Much of the media, and the analysts on which it relies, have provided a misleading narrative on the current political problems in Italy, following Sunday’s “no” vote on a referendum on constitutional changes. It has been lumped together with Trump, Brexit, the upsurge of extreme right-wing, anti-European or racist political parties and “populism,” ― which in much of the media seems to be code for demagogic politicians persuading ignorant masses to vote for stupid...

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Saudi pricing and output

No clear signal for what might come next with regard to the price of oil: Saudis set prices (above) and then let their clients buy all they want at the posted prices. The chart shows clients have been buying a bit more lately, but not anywhere near the Saudis currently presumed daily capacity of about 12 million barrels per day:

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