Tag Archives: US EConomics

—We study history in order to better understand what is going on now, to be better able to look into the future. — The Great Depression was a manifestation of the utter and complete failure of capitalism. Social Security, unemployment, and Welfare were implicit admissions of this failure. Capitalism had spectacularly failed to provide for labor, therefore capitalism should have borne the cost of Social Security and Welfare. The capitalists,...

 by New Deal democrat The state of the American consumer Yesterday I updated my alternative “consumer nowcast” fundamentals-based model of the economy, which serves as a check on my other models, and posted it over at Seeking Alpha. Hard to believe that I first wrote up that model over 15 years ago way back when I was a fledgling diarist at Daily Kos. The one surprise has been that, back then, I didn’t think interest rates could...

Production, layoffs, housing hit the positive trifecta in November, New Deal democrat We got a blizzard of November and December data this morning across all three – coincident, short leading, and long leading – timeframes: industrial production, jobless claims, and housing permits and starts. All three were positive. Let’s start with the King of Coincident Indicators, industrial production, which rose 0.5% in November. Manufacturing production...

[embedded content] Cruz Hits Biden Inflation Crisis on Squawk Box: Democrats’ Solution is to Pour Gasoline on the Fire – YouTubeAt 7:20 minutes, you get to hear Cancun Ted talk about the crisis supposedly created by Democrats. “In a time of Crisis, character is revealed. On the Democratic side, we have seen Democratic politicians are authoritarian. They will control your life. They will order you to obey and they will destroy you if you don’t....

Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) responds to Senator Ron Johnson’s telling people to gargle with mouthwash to kill Covid. Mr. Johnson: “Standard gargle, mouthwash, has been proven to kill the coronavirus (according to an audio recording of his remarks). If you get it, you may reduce viral replication. Why not try all these things?” Why not? It builds false hope of a simple cure when there is none and a hope for preventing Covid which gargling does not...

Disposable time as a common-pool resource IX — Disposable time as a model for environmental governance Not only could disposable time be regarded as a common-pool resource similar to other common-pool resources, but it could stand as the single most far-reaching and democratically vital model of a common-pool resource. Donald Stabile alluded to something in this vein when he noted that, “Human labor is also the primary constituent of the society...

There is an interesting discussion about a topic where I know especially little: K-12 education. Within it, there is a narrow discussion about whether it makes sense to try to teach statistics to people who don’t know calculus. This is a clear question. However, it seems that the people who discuss it skip a much more basic question which is why mathematical statistics should be taught to high school students, and an even more basic question which...

Blogger and Commenter RJS, MarketWatch 666, November’s consumer prices, October’s trade deficit, wholesale sales, and JOLTS The consumer price index rose 0.8% in November, as higher prices for food, energy, new and used vehicles, airline fares, and toys were only slightly offset by lower prices for information technology devices, hospital services and for vehicle insurance….the Consumer Price Index Summary from the Bureau of Labor Statistics...

Disposable time as a common-pool resource VIII — An ecological subject In “Foundations for Environmental Political Economy,” John Dryzek explored the prospects of an environmentalist economic subject, “Homo ecologicus,” as an alternative to the traditional rational actor or economic man. Dryzek criticized previous efforts at positing an ethical, environmentalist subject, saying they were flawed by wishful thinking and reductionism. The alternative...

Real average and aggregate wages continue decline in November; a sharp deceleration in the consumer sector now appears likely As you may already know, consumer prices increased 0.8% in November. In the past two months, there has been a re-acceleration in CPI, with the monthly numbers equal to earlier this year and the worst since the Great Recession:  On a YoY basis, consumer inflation is now the highest since the big Reagan recession...