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from Maria Alejandra Madi At the beginning of XX century, Joseph Schumpeter developed the concept of creative destruction  to characterize the waves of development based on clusters of innovations -both technical and institutional. In the last decades, these waves have included petrochemical products, automobiles, information technologies and biotechnologies, especially genetic modification. Looking back, throughout the postwar era in advanced Western societies, scientific research and...

The deceleration that began with the peak in oil capex continues: Trending lower ever since oil capex collapsed. But remember the hype for the one spike up it took early this year before reversing? Wouldn’t surprise me if net trade, which worked in favor of Q2 GDP, reverses gets revised down for Q2 with the June data coming out on Tuesday, with growing oil imports, stronger non oil imports, and weaker exports as per the latest monthly data:

Worse than expected, Q1 revised lower, and note the year over year deceleration in the chart. The inventory correction previously discussed looks to be well underway and has much further to go to bring inventories into balance with sales. Problem is, sales growth is declining, and the downward spiral will continue until ‘borrowing to spend’ steps up to support the negative effects of what I call unspent income, aka savings desires. And the historical drivers of private...

from David Ruccio Almost five years ago, I suggested we start calling things by their correct names. Take the working-class—people who are forced to have the freedom to sell their labor power for a wage. We refer to them as members of the middle-class (which needs to be “rebuilt“) and working families (who need to be helped) or, now as workers’ wages stagnate and the real value of the minimum wage declines, as the “feral underclass” (especially in theUK, in the aftermath of the...

Higher than expected, and last month revised higher as well. And oil imports are increasing as output falls and consumption remains firm: More bad news doesn’t stop the KC Fed from calling for a rate hike: HighlightsThe good news didn’t last long for the Kansas City manufacturing index which, after popping to plus 2 in June for the first positive score since January last year, is back in the negative column at minus 6 in July. New orders are at minus 5 with backlog orders at...

According to the Irish Statistical Office, economic growth in 2015 was an unbelievable 26%. At the same time, employment increased with 2,4% or 151.000 jobs. A brisk but not exceptional pace and totally at odds with the 26% economic growth estimate. Subsectoral data underscore this anomaly: job growth was located in agriculture, tourism (food and beverage service activities) and construction. And to a much smaller extent in the computer, pharmaceutical and leasing sectors which showed,...

1) What is capital? The national accounts define capital as a monetary variable. Many people however also talk about ‘natural capital’, ‘The stock of living and non-living components of the earth that provide a flow of valuable ecosystem goods or services‘. That’s from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, which has issued a very good report ‘The environmental accounts landscape‘. They may underestimate the extent to which laws and regulations shape ‘capital’. But here’s an interesting...

HighlightsPurchase applications for home mortgages were down 3.0 percent in the July 22 week following the previous week’s 2.0 percent decline, while refinancing applications, which tend to be even more sensitive to interest rates, fell a sharp 15.0 percent. The decrease brought the Purchase Index down to the lowest level since February, and the year-on-year gain in purchase applications was pared down to 12 percent from the prior week’s 16 percent gain. Mortgage rates...

from David Ruccio As I have argued many times on this blog, representations of the economy are produced and disseminated in many different spaces (in addition to academic economics departments) and through many different media (in addition to the usual, mostly mainstream economics textbooks). One example of this proliferation of economic representations is children’s literature. Children are the targets of educators and writers, most of whom (at least these days) are determined to make...

PMC ride August 5th and 6th coming up fast! First, thanks to all of you who’ve donated this year! For the rest, hoping you’ll dig deep and donate this year, which also means you stay on my otherwise free email list! ;) 100% of donations got to cancer research at Dana Farber- all overhead is sponsored. The 2 day ride raised $45 million last year, $500 million since inception! For me this is a ‘must give’, and just saying I personally donate a whole lot more than shows on my...