Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

The widely followed IHME model of coronavirus cases has been much too optimistic The IHME model by the University of Washington has gotten a lot of attention in the past month, most likely because it has always forecast a much lower number of total deaths caused by coronavirus than, for example the Imperial College of London’s model, that forecast over 1 million US deaths if no quarantine measures were put in place. But that model has come in for a lot...

An Update on Shadow Government Not only is the current level of testing for the coronavirus insufficient, the tests themselves are flawed.  Read this summary by infectious disease specialist Michael Osterholm and a coauthor for particulars.  Their key policy conclusion is A blue-ribbon panel of public health, laboratory and medical experts, ethicists, legal scholars and elected officials should be convened immediately to set out a road map with...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for April 19 – 23 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The coincident and short term leading indicators, as expected, continue to be awful — probably the worst since the Great Depression. Whether this downturn can be turned off relatively quickly, or whether it metasticizes into something far worse and far longer is going to be determined by the wisdom – or lack thereof – of those few...

Jobless claims still point to over 20,000,000 lost jobs in April, 15%+ unemployment rate As I’ve written in the past few weeks, the number of initial jobless claims correlates roughly with the number of net new jobs added or subtracted in any given month. Normally there is too much noise for it to be of much value, but with the huge spike in the past month, the signal will come through much more strongly. Here’s what the crude correlation looks like...

The actual US coronavirus trajectory: “flattening the curve” at least until 2021 “Flattening the curve” was not such an appetizing option either, because it meant that *everybody* got infected with the disease during the period of flattening, and so the death toll would still be horrifying, perhaps 1% to 3%. It also meant that the period that the infection would curtail society was extended to several years. Shortly a much better alternative, based on...

Trends in US States compared by coronavirus response I mentioned over the weekend that I wanted to break out and look at some different aspects of the coronavirus pandemic. Here’s the first: how are States at different ends of the restrictions and testing spectrums faring? Seven States have never even mandated lockdowns. Let’s look at these, alphabetically: Arkansas: Iowa: Figure 1 Nebraska: North Dakota South Dakota: Utah: Wyoming: Four of the seven...

Towards a modern “History of Republics”: a consideration of William Everdell’s “The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Republicans” In view of the horrific damage that the Trump Administration has done to the American Republic, during the past year I have done extensive reading of the histories of a number of the most successful or durable Republics over time. The reason has been to try to answer the question of whether there is an overarching...

The Art of Juxtaposition Seen in today’s New York Times in Print:

Oil prices are collapsing as West Texas intermediate is now trading at just over $11/bbl Oil prices move to the point where the marginal supply is profitable or unprofitable. In today’s world the marginal oil supply is US fracked oil. But the economics of fracked oil differs from traditional oil in that the current cost of production is very high as compared to most traditional sources where current costs are relative insignificant and the bulk of the...

The Usual Deficit Blather from the New York Times The Times today ran a truly execrable article warning us that, once the virus has passed, we will suffer dire consequences from the runup of government debt.  As most readers know, this argument is theoretically illiterate, derived from the false comparison between household and government debt.  We’ve been through this many times before, and I have nothing to add. I do want to focus on one sentence,...