Tag Archives: Uncategorized

from David Ruccio You’d think a Harvard economics professor would be able to do better than invoke horizontal equity as the sole argument for reducing the U.S. inheritance tax. But not Gregory Mankiw, who uses the silly parable of the Frugals and the Profligates to make his case for a low tax rate on the estates of the wealthiest 0.2 percent of Americans who actually owe any estate tax.* I’ll leave it to readers to judge whether or not it’s worth spending the time to compose a column on a...

The slow motion train wreck that began in late 2014 with the collapse of oil capex continues unabated, with no sign of reversal that I can detect, and the annual rate of growth is consistent with prior recessions: Highlights After spending heavily in the second quarter, the consumer has stepped back so far in the third quarter. Retail sales, after inching up a revised 0.1 percent in July, fell 0.3 percent in August and do not just reflect expected weakness in auto sales....

from Cherrie Bucknor and Dean Baker The 4.9 percent unemployment rate is getting close to most economists’ estimates of full employment. In fact, it is below many estimates from recent years and some current ones. Many policy types, including some at the Federal Reserve Board, take this as evidence that it’s necessary to raise interest rates in order to keep the unemployment rate from falling too low and triggering a round of spiraling inflation. The argument on the other side is first...

Mortgage applications up nicely this week for a change. Always hoping for the best! ;)

from David Ruccio I’ve been writing for some years now about the emergence of new technologies, especially automation and robotics, and their potential contribution to raising already-high levels of inequality even further. The problem is not, as I have tried to make clear, technology per se but the way it is designed and utilized within existing economic institutions. In other words, the central question is: who will own the robots? If capital owns the robots, even if their development...

So I count 3 or 4 increases and 3 or 4 decreases, so hard to say overall policy has changed, which is to keep the price just low enough to keep global investment to a minimum? Still very bad: This index went up with the shale boom and now down since the bust pulled the rug out from under oil capital expenditure:

from Thomas Palley After more than 7 years of economic recovery, the Federal Reserve is positioning itself to tighten monetary policy by raising interest rates. In light of the wobbly reaction in financial markets, an important question that must be asked is whether raising interest rates is the right tool. It could well be that the world’s leading central bank is going about the process of tightening in the wrong way. Owing to the dollar’s preeminent standing, that could have severe...

David Ruccio During the past couple of weeks, the only real India economic news in the Western press was the decision by “the Ranbir Kapoor of banking,” Raghuram G. Rajan, to step down from his position as the head of the Reserve Bank of India. But we read almost nothing about the 2 September nationwide strike by 150 million Indian workers [ht: Magpie], which was certainly the largest strike in India’s long labor history—and may have been the largest general strike in world history. As...

After more than 7 years of economic recovery, the Federal Reserve is positioning itself to tighten monetary policy by raising interest rates. In light of the wobbly reaction in financial markets, an important question that must be asked is whether raising interest rates is the right tool. It could well be that the world’s leading central [...]

from Dean Baker The efforts by many elite types to deny basic statistics and to tout the new technologies transforming the workplace are truly Trumpian in their nature. According to the OECD, productivity growth in the UK was essentially zero between 2007 and 2014 (the most recent year for which it has data). So we would naturally expect that the Guardian would run a column telling us that globalization and new technologies are making old workplace relations obsolete. As John Harris tells...