Tag Archives: Uncategorized

from David Ruccio Everyone has read or heard the story: the labor market has rebounded and workers, finally, are “getting a little bigger piece of the pie” (according to President Obama, back in June). And that’s the way it looked—until the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised its data. What was originally reported as a 4.2 percent increase in the first quarter of 2016 now seems to be a 0.4 decline (a difference of 4.6 percentage points, in the wrong direction). What’s more, real hourly...

Still looks to me like this is perhaps the most misunderstood statistic, as analysts believe it is signaling strength in the labor markets. Instead I’m suggesting claims are extraordinarily low because the unemployment benefits have become much harder to get: Even with a much higher population and labor force, and with a higher unemployment rate,new claims are at 40 year lows: Not at all good: HighlightsOnce again the Philly Fed’s headline tells an entirely different story...

from Dean Baker Donald Trump seems to have driven a substantial portion of the media into a frenzy with his anti-trade rhetoric. While much of what Trump says is wrong, and his solutions are at best ill-defined, the response in the press has largely been dishonest. For example, a New York Times editorial tried to imply that there was an ambiguous relationship between the size of the trade deficit and employment in manufacturing. It pointed out that Japan and Germany, both countries with...

The chart shows both how depressed the mortgage market is historically as well as how it’s been deteriorating over the last several months: And lots of headlines like this popping up: Wednesday, August 17, 2016Sacramento Housing in July: Sales down 7%, Active Inventory down 10% YoYLas Vegas Real Estate in July: Sales down 10% YoY, Inventory down 1% Read more at http://www.calculatedriskblog.com U.S. companies’ stock buyback plans hit four-year low: TrimTabs Aug 16...

from David Ruccio Is education the solution to the problem of growing inequality? As I wrote in early 2015, Americans like to think that education is the solution to all economic and social problems. Including, of course, growing inequality. Why? Because focusing on education—encouraging people to get more higher education—involves no particular tradeoffs. More education for some doesn’t mean less education for others (at least in principle). And providing more education doesn’t involve...

from Maria Alejandra Madi The global scenario has restated the menace of deep depressions among the economic challenges. Indeed, in the current setting, the principles of corporate behaviour have reinforced the lack of commitment to long-run social and economic sustainability. Looking backward, in the context of the 1930 Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes pointed out that the evolution of capital markets increases the risk of speculation and instability since these markets are mostly...

Lots of nuances but still tending to keep the Fed on hold: HighlightsThe headlines for the consumer price report look very soft but there are important offsetting pressures. The CPI came in unchanged in July, pulled back by a 1.6 percent monthly decline in energy prices and other weakness including flat prices for food and contraction in transportation. And it doesn’t look much better when excluding food & energy where the gain for the core is only 0.1 percent. But two...

Just another bit of bad news: HighlightsThe New York region’s manufacturing sector remains flat based on the Empire State index which came in slightly below zero at minus 4.21 in August vs plus 0.55 in July. New orders are especially flat, at plus 1.04 vs July’s minus 1.82, with unfilled orders extending a long run of negative readings at minus 9.28. There is, however, strength in shipments, at 9.01, but it won’t last long given the weakness in orders. Employment is also...

from Peter Radford Last week I stirred up a certain curiosity as to why I had lumped Peter Drucker into the same bag as both von Mises and Hayek. Well, simply put, the three of them, along with Karl Popper and Joesph Schumpeter, had an enormous, even oversized, impact on modern economics. Yes economics. Let’s not fall into the same trap as economists do when they, with a sweep of their hands, dismiss business theory as not an aspect of economics. Of course it is. After all if business is...

Still decelerating ever since the collapse in oil capex: