Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

A curious coincidence is that the US midterm elections happened one day after the US reimposed its second round of illegal economic sanctions on Iran, with the focus on oil, shipping, and banking, along with some other sectors. Despite all but a handful of governments around the world supporting Iran in this matter (despite apparently two attempted assassinations of opponents of Iran’s government in European nations recently) against the US out of a hope...

Setting markers for a 2019 slowdown in the jobs market How might a slowdown (not a recession, but a decline in growth to the 1%-2% YoY range in GDP) that I’ve been forecasting for around midyear 2019 manifest itself in the employment arena? One of my mantras is that “hiring leads firing.” In other words, companies slow or stop their hiring plans, or cut back on hours, before they actually start laying people off. So, one natural place to look is the...

(Dan here…better a bit late than ….) by Barkley Rosser Monday Before The Midterms And WaPo Is At It Again It is Robert J. Samuelson doing his usual schtick, albeit with some recognition of other issues, such as global warming and immigration.  But these are not what has his prime attention on the day before midterm elections in the US.  Moaning that “Everyone” will lose this election, his main focus is on the budget deficit, without a single mention of...

From an interview on NPR’s Here and Now comes: “The official actuaries of the Social Security system say in order to get our Social Security and retirement funds in balance, they’d have to cut benefits by 25 percent indefinitely into the future,” he says. “Do I think it’s going to happen? Well I don’t know, but this is one of the reasons why inflation is the major problem out there. So long as you don’t do it, you’re going to cause the debt overall — the...

by Steve Roth (originally published at Evonomics) Economists Agree: Democratic Presidents are Better at Making Us Rich. Eight Reasons Why. In 2013, economists Alan Blinder and Mark Watson — no wild-eyed liberals, they — asked a very important question: Why has the U.S. economy performed better under Democratic than Republican presidents, “almost regardless of how one measures performance”? Start with their “performed better” assertion: it’s uncontestable....

October jobs report: probably the best report of the entire expansion HEADLINES: +250,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate unchanged at 3.7% U6 underemployment rate declined -0.1% from 7.5% to 7.4% Here are the headlines on wages and the broader measures of underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, but Want a Job Now:  rose +72,000 from 5.237 million to 5.309 million Part time for economic reasons: fell -21,000 from 4.642 million...

by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for October 29 – November 2 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators piece is up at Seeking Alpha. Several areas, like rail traffic, saw significant rebounds. But interest rates also rose to new expansion highs as well. As usual, not only does clicking and reading the article bring you up to the moment on what is happening with the economy, it also helps put a little $$$ in my account....

ISM new orders posts lowest reading in nearly 2 years The ISM reported the other day that The October PMI® registered 57.7 percent, a decrease of 2.1 percentage points from the September reading of 59.8 percent. The New Orders Index registered 57.4 percent, a decrease of 4.4 percentage points from the September reading of 61.8 percent. On Tuesday I said that “the first thing I am looking for is decelerating growth which will show up in a reading below...

Trump Says Dems Support Venezuelan “High Taxes And Open Borders” The  average tax rate in Venezuela is 25%. The average tax rate in the US is 26%.  Sorry, Trump, this is yet another lie by Trump, but what else is new on this? I do not know the details of Venezuelan of immigration policies, but at this point in time the issue  in Venezuela is not immigrants freely arriving and causing economic problems, but just the opposite: people leaving in massive...

Three weeks ago, in response to the IPCC report warning that CO2 emissions had to be reduced to 45% of their 2010 levels by 2030 to avoid the possibility of global temperature rising above 1.5°C, I posted “The IPCC 1.5° C Report and the Ten-Hour Week,” (also posted at Angry Bear) which offered the sketch of a plan for how to do that. I have no illusions that the IPCC or any other prestigious organization will latch on to this idea and seek to flesh it out...