Tag Archives: US EConomics

“When we first came to Washington in 1933,” FDR Labor Secretary Francis Perkins wrote in her memoir, The Roosevelt I Knew, “the Black bill was already before the Congress. Introduced by Senator Hugo L. Black, it had received support from many parts of the country and from many representatives and senators.” The Black Bill was the Senate version of the Black-Connery Thirty-Hour Bill. On April 6, 1933, the Senate approved the measure by a vote of 53 to 30....

(There’s a movie at the end!) For decades we have been hearing about the loss of industrial production through out what is called the “Rust Belt”.  It’s presented, even as recent as the prior presidential election as a relative regional problem that only began post Reagan.  What gets me though is that the reporting and ultimately the politics are as if the rust belt is/was unique in their experience with the west and east coast experiencing nothing of the...

2018 – The Year of the Complicated Suburb, Amanda Kolson Hurley, CityLab In the past several years, a much more complex picture has emerged—one of Asian and Latino “ethnoburbs,” rising suburban poverty, and Baby Boomers stuck in their split-levels. 2018 really drove home the lesson of when Americans say they live in the suburbs (as most do), the suburbia they describe are vastly different kinds of places where people of every stripe live, work, pray,...

At the CEPR blog, Beat the Press, Dean Baker and Jason Hickel are debating degrowth. Dean makes the excellent point that “claims about growth” from oil companies and politicians who oppose policies to restrict greenhouse gas emissions, “are just window dressing.” I also agree, however, with the first comment in response to Dean’s post that his point about window dressing could be taken much further. I would add that economic growth is window dressing for...

CSX connects most major U.S. cities east of the Mississippi River. Since 2017, the railroad has laid off 6,000 employees, cut back on capital spending, and slashed the number of trains it runs and discontinued hundreds of the routes it serves. Together CSX and Union Pacific serve major U.S. cities west of the Mississippi River and together they discontinued service on 197 out of 301 cross-country routes that the two rail giants partnered on in September...

A belated Happy Thanksgiving and a note about the Index of Leading Indiators The past few days have been spent entertaining and gorging on turkey et al., so I haven’t been posting, but there wasn’t much in the way of economic data, so really nothing has been missed.  I hope you, your family, and your loved ones had a happy Thanksgiving! One item that did get reported on Wednesday worth a quick mention was the Conference Board’s Index of Leading...

Mark Thoma had this up on Facebook. and pulled this from Tim Taylor’s Conversable Economist. It is an interesting read. “Fifty years ago in 1968, Milton Friedman’s Presidential Address to the American Economic Association set the stage for battles in macroeconomics that have continued ever since. The legacy of the talk has been important enough that in the Winter 2018 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, where I work as Managing Editor (Tim...

Senator Grassley tweeting: “Five times now we hv granted extension for Dr Ford to decide if she wants to proceed w her desire stated one wk ago that she wants to tell senate her story Dr Ford if u changed ur mind say so so we can move on I want to hear ur testimony. Come to us or we to u,” I like how tweeting brings out the intellect in people and especially our politicians. And Chuckie the tweeting senator does this on a public forum with Ford and...

I had written this in 2009 and it also appeared in “the new agenda.” It is a decent piece about people who saw the coming crisis pre-2007/8 and those who opposed them. Recently, Stanford Magazine did an article on one of the University’s former law review presidents who graduated at the top of the 1964 class. The first female to hold either distinction of graduating first in her class and also as president of the school’s Law Review. Prophet and Loss....

Paul Krugman put many of his thoughts together here “What Do We Actually Know About the Economy? (Wonkish)” Basically he concludes that some economists are confused but Paul Krugman knows a lot (no one has ever accused him of being diplomatic). Of course I agree with him. However, I am very pleased to note that I finally find one or two points of disagreement. I’d just click the link but to try to summarize “Macroeconomics is better than you think,...