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download the whole issue Negative interest rates or 100% reserves: alchemy vs chemistry          2Herman Daly          download pdf Why negative interest rate policy is ineffective and dangerous          5Thomas I. Palley          download pdf  Japan’s liquidity trap          15Tanweer Akram          download pdf Paul Romer’s assault on ‘post-real’ macroeconomics          43Lars Pålsson Syll          download pdf                                                                           ...

from Dean Baker Most workers suffer serious consequences when they mess up on their jobs. Custodians get fired if the toilet is not clean. Dishwashers lose their job when they break too many dishes, but not all workers are held accountable for the quality of their work. At the top of the list of people who need not be competent to keep their job are economists. Unlike workers in most occupations, when large groups of economists mess up they can count on the media covering up their...

Still on the downward glide path since the collapse in oil capex: Highlights Existing home sales, in sharp contrast to new home sales, haven’t been able to build any strength this year and today’s pending home sales report points to outright weakness in the coming months. The pending index fell a very steep 2.4 percent in August with 3 of 4 regions positing monthly declines. The exception is the Northeast which rose 1.3 percent in the month and is the only region in the plus...

from David Ruccio source Niall Ferguson, Harvard’s incorrectly political ignorant gay-bashing bloviating right-wing infotainment war-crimes-apologist historian, finally gets something right. In explaining the “fight isn’t going as planned” for Hillary Clinton, Ferguson writes:  Last week, Clinton’s supporters seized on new economic data from the Census Bureau showing that median household income rose by more than 5 percent in real terms last year. Poverty is down. So is the number of...

Continues in contraction year over year, and revisions likely to cause further downward GDP revisions: Highlights The headline, at a monthly zero percent, is flat and so are the indications from the bulk of the August durable goods report. Excluding transportation, orders slipped 0.4 percent. This reading excludes a 22 percent downswing in civilian aircraft orders that is offset in part, however, by a solid 0.7 percent gain for vehicle orders. Readings on core capital goods...

from David Ruccio We can thank Donald Trump for one thing: he’s put the white working-class on the political map.* In recent months, we’ve seen a veritable flood of articles, polls, and surveys about the characteristics, conditions, and concerns of white working-class voters—all with the premise that the white working-class is fundamentally different from the rest of non-working-class, non-white Americans. But why are the members of the white working-class attracting so much attention? My...

This too has followed the shale boom/bust cycle and is headed lower: No recovery here: This looks back over the last three months and seems to be decelerating from already modest levels: Up a bit but still low: The flash Markit US Services PMI came in at 51.9 in September of 2016 from 51 in August, reaching the highest figure in five months and above market expectations of 51.1. Activity picked up for the first time in three months due to ongoing new business growth while...

In Nature Branko Milanovic published an interesting article about (very) long run cycles in inequality, using among other metrics the wage-rent quotiënt as an indicator of inequality (wage income relative to income of landowners). See the first graph. I can actually add a little to this. I’ve extended the Dutch (Frisian) wage/rent series published earlier on this blog backward to 1697 and forward to 1862 (below). Up to about 1800, developments in Friesland and Spain seem to be pretty...

from David Ruccio Has the policy consensus on economics fundamentally changed in recent years? To read Mike Konczal it has. I can’t say I’m convinced. While some of the details may have changed, I still think we’re talking about different—liberal and conservative—versions of the same old trickledown economics. But first Konczal’s argument. He begins with a pretty good summary of the policy consensus before the crash of 2007-08: Before the crash, complacent Democrats, whatever their...