Tag Archives: Uncategorized

Very cool webpage which maps CO2 content of electricity in different European countries in real time (i.e.: German content drops when sun start to shine in Germany), as well as international flows. Blackest country: Poland. Greenest: Norway (hydro), France (nuclear). I’ve been tweeting a bit with global warming deniers. They are soooooo conservative, at least when it comes to their (lack of) believe in the power of technology. The transition is taking place already. Here, a real life zero...

from Asad Zaman This continues the sequence of posts on re-reading Keynes. The fundamental point about the labor market which is made in Chapter 2 is that the micro level negotiations on wages between firms and laborers do not determine the real wage in the macro-economy. Before explaining this point in detail, we want to show how it is just a special case of the general idea that the economy is a complex system which cannot be understood by looking at simple sub-systems. The idea of...

from David Ruccio As regular readers of this blog know, I try to make available and critically interpret charts of data—both to challenge others’ arguments and to provide a foundation for my own. Last year, I spent much more time using publicly available data to make my own charts, which readers are free to use for their own purposes. Here are some of those charts (just click on each chart to go to the post in which it originally appeared).

The year over year chart continues its 2 year deceleration unabated. No telling where it ends but the end will coincide with increased deficit spending, private or public: Highlights Job growth may be the new economic policy but wage inflation may be the risk. Nonfarm payrolls rose a lower-than-expected 156,000 in December but, in an offset, revisions added a net 19,000 to the two prior months (November now at 204,000 and October at 135,000). But the big story is another...

While surveys remain Trumped up, at least so far when it comes to actual numbers the deceleration continues, and can’t reverse without a commensurate increase in deficit spending, public or private: Highlights ADP is pointing to a softer-than-expected employment report on Friday. ADP’s estimate for private payrolls is 153,000, a still respectable level of growth but noticeably below the Econoday consensus for 172,000. Private payroll growth in Friday’s December employment...

from Dean Baker Shortly after Donald Trump enters the White House, we should get an answer to a key question from his campaign: What does he actually intend to do about trade? Trade was one of his main issues when he campaigned in the key industrial states that he won in November. Trump argued that past presidents of both parties had failed the country’s workers by signing bad trade deals. He said that the negotiators were “stupid” and that he would instead appoint “smart” negotiators who...

Car sales better than expected, but the annual rate of growth has slowed and 2016 was up less than .5% vs 2015 year. So if vehicles added less than the year before, something else has to add more than it did the year before, or the annual GDP growth slowed: Sales for 2016 hit a new annual record. Sales in 2016 were at 17.465 million, up from the previous record of 17.396 million set last year.Read more at http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/#A7zlBSb83MtA17vJ.99 Manhattan’s...

from Peter Radford I am going to be writing an extensive review of Avner Offer and Gabriel Söderberg’s excellent book: “The Nobel Factor” in the near future. Meanwhile allow me to share a a couple of early comments because they bear heavily on how we all approach the Trump administration. Offer and Söderberg clarify the circumstances behind the shift in economics that occurred in the late 1970’s and came into full effect in the subsequent decades. Their  focus is heavily on how the Nobel...

Purchase apps now down year over year, and less than half of what they used to be pre crisis: Highlights Purchase applications for home mortgages fell 2.0 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in the December 30 week compared to the level 2 weeks earlier, which was the last prior reading due to the Christmas holiday. The refinance index was down a much sharper 22 percent compared to two weeks ago, as higher interest rates continue to deter refinancing by homeowners to a...

A bit of a bump up going into year end. Could be about expiring tax breaks as has happened in prior years: Highlights Construction had been lagging through most of 2016 but, like the factory sector, appears to have picked up steam going into year-end. Spending rose 0.9 percent in November which just tops Econoday’s high estimate and is the best reading since June. Residential spending rose 1.0 percent in the month on top of October’s 1.6 percent gain. The gain here is...