Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

by Jeff Soplop Bombing for Votes: Public opinion shifts during the Iraq war and implications for future conflicts Despite the recent summit in Singapore, which mostly made for good television and little substance, North Korea appears to be quickly ignoring any promises–whether implicit, explicit, or imagined–made to President Trump to dismantle its nuclear program. In Iran, Trump’s decision to withdraw from the six-party nuclear deal and the re-imposition...

Don’t say I didn’t warn you (in particular, don’t say I didn’t warn you on September 25 2008). Naked CDS make financial arson profitable. It is also, probably, legal. It seems Blackstone made some money by threatening financial arson (arson meets grenmail). WSJ (via Drum) Blackstone offered Hovnanian a low-cost loan and persuaded the builder to miss a small interest payment in exchange, which would trigger payouts on $333 million in Blackstone’s...

The Value of Life and the Metaphor of Choice Perhaps no topic generates such bewilderment between economists and the general public as the monetary valuation of human life, or the value of a statistical life (VSL) to use the term preferred by professional economists.  Economists insist that longevity is a commodity bought and sold on markets like anything else, which means it has a price and an underlying schedule of willingness to pay just as we would...

Weekly Indicators for July 2 – 6: long term forecast continues to deteriorate June data started out with another strong jobs report, but once again with weak wage growth. Motor vehicle sales and both the ISM manufacturing and nonmanufacturing indexes were very positive as well. May data included and increase in construction spending and factory orders. My usual note: I look at the high frequency weekly indicators because while they can be very noisy,...

In Defense of the Francois-Baughman Analysis of the Trump Tariffs Dr. Joseph Francois and Laura M. Baughman are being criticized for writing: This policy brief examines the potential net impacts on U.S. jobs across all industries of the proposed steel and aluminum tariffs applied to targeted steel and aluminum imports from all countries. It does not take into account any potential retaliation against U.S. exports; only of the tariffs themselves. We find...

pgl responded to the post below… “Corporations… make profits appear in low-tax countries; but there’s very little real production or employment behind those profits…. Tax-haven countries… show… ridiculously high levels of profits relative to wages… because the profits aren’t being earned where they’re being reported…. Ireland….” Krugman is referring to transfer pricing manipulation. One would have hoped tax reform would make enforcing the arm’s length...

June jobs report: another strong late cycle reading HEADLINES: +213,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate up +0.2% from 3.8% to 4.0% U6 underemployment rate up +0.2% from 7.6% to 7.8% 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:  up +75,000 from 5.183 million to 5.258 million Part time for economic reasons: down -205,000 from 4.948 million to 4.743...

Pruitt’s EPA Trashing Benefit-Cost Analysis Of Environmental Policy Scott Pruitt increasingly looks the worst of the worst out of the appalling cabinet of President Trump, quite aside from his race to become the single most corrupt cabinet member in the entire history ofthe US.  The latter is trivial compared to his policy change after policy change that will increase pollution in the environment and end up killing people, to be blunt about it.  But now...

Shock EU Court Decision Strikes Blow Against Investment Arbitration With all the dreary news we’ve seen this week, could you stand some good news? The battle against investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) got a huge boost in March when the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled in Slovak Republic v. Achmea B.V. (“Achmea”) that ISDS is contrary to EU law. The decision was something of a surprise because the preliminary analysis (“opinion,”...

Great new Tax Justice Network podcast on how “Bean Counters…Broke Capitalism” The June 28 Taxcast is out with a focus on the Big Four accounting firms. Richard Brooks is the author of Bean Counters: The triumph of the accountants and how they broke capitalism (order here in the UK and here in the US) which documents accountants’ involvement in some of the world’s worst financial scandals, not least of which is the promotion of tax havens. The new...