Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

(Dan here…Lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) Politico End Zone Dance The cover article of politico is a concession by Blake Hounshell that he was wrong and that I and many others were right. I enjoy a little end zone dance in comments The case is overwhelmingly convincing. Also none of the critical evidence is new. As you now are no longer a russiagate skeptic, you should concede that you were foolish in February. All the (100% convincing)...

It’s called the Accountable Capitalism Act.   Here’s the bill text. Yves Smith has a take on this…lots of talk in the news econ sections: Elizabeth Warren introduced her Accountable Capitalism Act in the Senate yesterday and set forth the logic of her bill in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. The Massachusetts senator described how as recently as the early 1980s, even conservative groups acknowledged publicly that corporations were responsible to employees and...

Kevin Hassett In Lie Lie Land I feel sorry for Kevin Hassett.  Of course he made a complete fool of himself two decades ago with his book on Dow 36,000 (still some ways away) with James Glassman, but he has had a good amount of time to get over that embarrassment.  When he was appointed CEA Chair for Trump, he was of the few appointments Trump made that received praise, especially in the  area of economics.  Pretty much everybody else appointed was...

Gimme Shelter: the rental affordability crisis has worsened Four years ago HUD warned of “the worst rental affordability crisis ever,” citing statistics that About half of renters spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent, up from 18 percent a decade ago, according to newly released research by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Twenty-seven  percent of renters are paying more than half of their income on rent. This is a serious...

It has been almost ten years since: Bear Stearns folded Lehmann collapsed of its own free will I posted on this blog All of the above Those who guessed “c” or “d” are optimists. Those who are expecting a long series of posts dwelling on the correct answer of “b” (with some references to “a” and AIGFP) will not be disappointed. But this is an introduction. I have been trying to think of how to simplify ten years of lessons as if there were one root cause....

Four measures of wages all show renewed stagnation This is something I haven’t looked at in awhile. Since 2013, I have documented the stagnation vs. growth in average and median wages, for example here and here. I last did this in 2017. So let’s take an updated look. We have a variety of economic data series to track both average and median wages: The most  commonly known measure is that of average hourly pay for nonsupervisory workers, which is part of...

Real wages decline YoY, while real aggregate payrolls grow With the consumer price report this morning, let’s conclude this weeklong focus on jobs and wages by updating real average and aggregate wages. Through July 2018, consumer prices are up 2.9% YoY, while wages for non-managerial workers are up 2.7%. Thus real wages have actually declined YoY: In the longer view, real wages have actually been flat for nearly 2 1/2 years: Because...

June 2018 JOLTS report evidence of both excellent jobs market and taboo against raising wages Yesterday’s JOLTS report remained excellent, suffering only in comparison to last month: Hires were just below their all-time high of one month ago Quits were just below their all-time high of one month ago Total separations made a new 17-year high Openings were just below their all-time high of two months ago Layoffs and discharges rose to their average level...

Would Serious Climate Change Mitigation Policy Increase World Hunger? That’s the finding of a recent study published in Nature Climate Change, “Risk of Increased Food Insecurity under Stringent Global Climate Change Mitigation Policy” by an international team of 22 researchers.  (Coauthorship like this is why god created et al.)  The abstract has made the rounds of the blogosphere, including Marginal Revolution, which is where I found it. The article...

by Joseph Joyce Empires, Past and Present Economists rarely write about “empires,” unless they are referring to historical examples such as the Roman empire. But Thomas Hauner of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis,  Branko Milanovic of the Graduate Center of City University of New York and Suresh Naidu of Columbia University have presented a study of empires using criteria drawn from an economics classic, John Hobson’s Imperialism (1902). The same...