Tag Archives: Uncategorized

Deirdere McCloskey should be freaking out. A man called Trump threatens her world. McCloskey is not just the most eloquent but also the most thorough defender of the idea that ‘the bourgeois ethic’ and bourgeois virtues were crucial to the unprecedented prosperity of modern men and women – and improved our ethical standards in the process: “Give masses of ordinary people equality before the law and equality of social dignity, and leave them alone, and it turns out that they become...

According to Eurostat, unemployment differences in the EU are still large (graph). Especially the euro countries do bad. The Netherlands and Germany seem to buck this trend but this must be ascribed to whopping surpluses on their current accounts. As not all countries can, by definition, run current account surpluses at the same time (my surplus is your deficit) this means that total domestic demand in the Euro Area is way to low. Another option: people are working too much and have to...

from David Ruccio Gabriel Zucman, in his article in the special issue of Pathways, “State of the Union: The Poverty and Inequality Report 2016” (pdf), reveals lots of scary numbers about wealth inequality in the United States.* The scariest is the percentage of wealth owned by the top 0.1 percent of households, which “has exploded in the U.S. over the past four decades.” The share of wealth held by the top 0.1 percent of households is now almost as high as in the...

As per the chart, the deceleration of employment growth continues in what’s now been a very steady decline going on 2 years. And with employment growth decelerating at this rate it’s likely the unemployment rate will remain elevated indefinitely: Highlights Solid payroll growth is not the whole story of the October employment report. Average hourly earnings are rising, up an outsized 0.4 percent in the month with the year-on-year rate, at 2.8 percent, suddenly near 3.0...

To simple people it is indubitable that the nearest cause of the enslavement of one class of men by another is money. They know that it is possible to cause more trouble with a rouble than with a club; it is only political economy that does not want to know it. — Leo Tolstoy, What Shall We Do Then? (1886) The financial sector has the same objective as military conquest: to gain control of land and basic infrastructure, and collect tribute. To update von Clausewitz, finance has become war...

from David Ruccio Eduardo Porter is right: the “long, painful slog out of the Great Recession” hasn’t been accompanied by any kind of shared prosperity. As the chart above reveals, the share of income going to the bottom 90 percent of U.S. households has actually fallen since 2007 (from 50.3 percent to 49.5 percent)—and, in recent years, remains far below what it was (67.4 percent) in 1970. In other words, the so-called recovery looks a lot like the unequalizing dynamic of...

As previously discussed, jobless claims are down largely because they are a lot harder to get:https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-11-02/the-good-news-on-jobs-isn-t-all-that-good And now they are going up a bit, though still very low historically: Highlights Jobless claims are holding at or near record lows, with initial claims up only 7,000 in the October 29 week and continuing claims down 14,000 in the October 22 week. The 4-week average for initial claims, now at...

The Fed is looking for ‘some improvement’ Let me know if you see any! ;) Sideways at best as this prior source of growth is no longer contributing:After just one day it’s come down a bunch: United States ISM New York Index The ISM NY Current Business Conditions Index fell to 49.2 in October 2016 from 49.6 in September. Volume of purchases continued to fall (44.3 from 47.1 the previous month) and current revenues went up at a slower pace (51.4 from 51.6). By contrast,...

Gotta like the headlines. The growth rate remains below where it was during the beginning of the last recession… That is, we could already be well into recession: Adjusted for inflation, also below prior recession levels: And it doesn’t seem like building $600 billion of reserves, buying US stocks, and a negative rate policy have done much for the Swiss consumer: Not even a hint of improvement here: As previously discussed, manufacturing seems to be leveling off at reduced...

Weakening further ever since the collapse in oil capex: speaks for itself: