Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

Hurricane Relief: Interesting developments going on in the Senate. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) is taking to task administration officials and conservative movement leaders by holding up the confirmation of Russ Vought as the right hand man to Mick Mulvaney’s at the Office of Management and Budget. Wonder why he would do this? Apparently Senator Coryn believes there should be more funding for Texas’ hurricane relief. He has made it clear that Vought will...

Now Amazon wants to break the bank On Thursday (October 19), the first stage of the Amazon sweepstakes for a second headquarters, dubbed “HQ2,” was completed as cities submitted their bids to the Internet giant. With a possible $5 billion investment and eventually 50,000 jobs at salaries over $100,000, this is one of the very best economic development projects to come along in a long time. BUT IS IT?* I have a hard time understanding how this project...

by Hale Stewart (originally published at Bonddad blog) Labor Market Slack and Weak Wage Growth From the IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook: Sluggishness in core inflation in advanced economies—a surprise in view of stronger than expected activity—has coincided with slow transmission of declining unemployment rates into faster wage growth. Real wages in most large advanced economies have moved broadly with labor productivity in recent years, as indicated...

“Hurricane adjusting” initial claims has proven its value For the last month, I deduced a “hurricane adjusted” number for initial claims, which showed that the previous underlying positive trend was intact, with the four week average remaining in the 230,000’s. That approach was borne out by this week’s report, which, at 222,000, was the lowest since 1973. Although I haven’t gone through the entire formal exercise, here’s how the numbers from the three...

Vis New York Times Growth becomes the overriding motivation — something treasured for its own sake, not for anything it brings to the world. Facebook and Google can point to a greater utility that comes from being the central repository of all people, all information, but such market dominance has obvious drawbacks, and not just the lack of competition. As we’ve seen, the extreme concentration of wealth and power is a threat to our democracy by making...

Marxism-Leninism And The Chinese Communist Party Congress At this moment I am watching live on Bloomberg News the opening speech by President/Party General Secretary/Chairman of the Military Commission Xi Jinping of the once-every-five-years Chinese Communist Party Congress.  This is far more important than what one finds on other TV networks whether pro-Trump right now (how great his tax plan/tromping on immigrants and football players are) or...

(Dan here…Stormy sends a reminder that the world has a real side as well…lifted from an e-mail)) Calling out the precursor to an Ecological Armageddon. Thought you might like to see this study—also written up in Guardian.  Economists are totally irrelevant.   Profit and money are their game….and that game is ending within our children’s lifetime. More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas See also:...

Underlying industrial production trend ex-hurricanes remains positive A few weeks ago, I suggested a hurricane workaround for industrial production. That approach was to average the four regional Fed indexes excluding Dallas, and add the Chicago PMI, and finally discount for the unusual strength this year in these regional indexes vs. production. Here was my conclusion: The average of the 5 is 22.9. Dividing that by 5 gives us +.5. Subtracting .3 gives...

Here is something I have been working on for the last month.  As it happens, last week Kevin Drum posted some aspects of the same data. House prices have exceeded by a substantial margin median household income: But the monthly mortgage payments have not: This is because, while the prices of houses have increased, mortgage interest rates have decreased over the same period. So, saving for the down payment is considerably more difficult...

A thought for Sunday: the Rule of Gerontocracy The US looks like government of, by, and for senior citizens. President Donald Trump just had his 72nd birthday. He assumed office at age 71, the oldest person ever to do so. In Congress, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is 75 years old.  His Democratic counterpart, Charles Schumer, is a relatively spry 66. The median age of US Senators is 63. A full 30 Senators are age 70 or older. Sixteen of them...