Tag Archives: Uncategorized

from David Ruccio Everyone (from President Obama to venture capitalist Alan Patricof) agrees the carried tax loophole—which allows investment fund managers to treat much of their income as capital gains (taxed at a top rate of 23.8 percent) rather than as income (for which the top rate is 39.6 percent)—should be closed. But, as Michael Hiltzik reminds us, it’s a tax break the super rich are willing to give up in order to keep the loophole they really value: the capital gains tax...

The deceleration of job growth continues since the collapse in oil capex: Highlights The labor market is solid but maybe isn’t overheating, at least yet. Nonfarm payrolls rose a lower-than-expected 151,000 in August with revisions to July and June at a net minus 1,000. The unemployment rate holds at 4.9 percent with modest increases on both the employment and unemployment side of this reading. Earnings are very soft in this report, up only 0.1 percent in the month for a...

Ireland (the government plus the private sector) has by far the largest net international debt of all EU countries (measured as a % of GDP). To an extent this is caused because the Irish state was pressured, by its EU friends, to borrow money from other countries to bail out (the creditors of) Irish banks. The large and fast deterioration of the Irish position in 2014 and 2015 might be caused because large international companies finance their Irish headquarters with inter company...

from Peter Radford For a variety of reasons I pulled Olivier Blanchard’s macroeconomics textbook off my shelf yesterday — I have the fifth edition which dates back to 2007. Or at least that’s how he begins his opening paragraph, he says he’s writing in mid-2007. So it would be easy to plunge into the book and start to look for evidence that Blanchard’s version of economics led us all to expect or predict the crisis that unfolded only a year later. But that’s no what caught my eye. No I...

In the latest Research Bulletin of the ECB Gerhard Rünstler rightly states that ‘historical evidence suggests that many financial crises have been preceded by credit and housing booms‘ and ‘the emerging stylised facts have by no means been digested by the scientific economics community‘. But his implicit suggestion that these findings about credit, housing booms and economic downturns are new is wrong. According to Fred Foldvary (in 2007), ‘In the United States there has been a real...

from David Ruccio [modified from the original source (pdf)] We’ve been learning a great deal about the conditions and consequences of the obscene levels of inequality in the United States—now, in the past, and it seems for the foreseeable future. Right now, inequality is escalating within public higher education, especially in research universities that are chasing both tuition revenues and rankings. Thus, the editorial board of the Badger Herald, the student newspaper at the University...

The downtrend looks intact, and on the edge of contraction: Highlights Markit’s U.S. manufacturing sample continues to report month-to-month growth but slow growth. The PMI for August came in at 52.0 which is only modestly above the 50 level that divides monthly growth from monthly contraction. Growth in new orders slowed which is a key negative in the report, along with slowing in employment. The sample is also cutting its inventories which points to lack of confidence in...

Mortgage purchase applications are now down to only 5% higher than a year ago: A lot worse than expected: Highlights Business growth has slowed in Chicago this month based on the city’s PMI which fell more than 4 points but, at 51.5, is still over breakeven 50. New orders slowed while backlogs fell sharply and into sub-50 contraction. Production also slowed while inventories were drawn down. Employment posted a gain and is the strength of the August report, strength however...

from Peter Radford Ben Casselman at fivethirtyeight.com throws us some back to school numbers. They make for depressing reading. America is not committed to education, far from it. Priorities seem to be elsewhere. And short term thinking dominates. Here are a few key highlights: The US had roughly 8.4 million teachers back in 2008. Now it has 8.2 million This is despite adding about 1 million new students So student/teacher ratios have risen back to levels last seen in the 1990’s School...

from Mark Weisbrot The neoliberal reforms it has imposed on countries around the world have been disastrous. The UK’s vote in June to leave the European Union, combined with an extraordinary backlash against trade agreements as manifested in the US presidential election, has set off an unprecedented public debate about globalization and even some of the neoliberal principles that it embodies in its current form. It is therefore of great relevance to look at what is happening to one...