Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

Via International Business Times (via RSN): Trump Administration’s Infrastructure Plan Involves Privatizing America’s Assets and Selling Them to Goldman Sachs>/a> President Donald Trump’s administration this week touted an infrastructure plan that would sell off public assets to private financial firms. Left unsaid in the White House promotional materials was any mention that the Trump aide who is overseeing the initiative comes from a Wall Street firm...

Via Salon, another Goldman Sachs story: Ted Cruz failed to properly disclose Goldman Sachs loans: FEC This has not been a good week for Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. First he is the butt of a cutting joke by Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota (who told “USA Today” that “I like Ted Cruz probably more than my colleagues like Ted Cruz, and I hate Ted Cruz”), and now the Federal Election Commission has ruled against him — unanimously, no less. The three...

Fighting Zombies with Zombies Larry Mishel and Josh Bivens enlist zombie government policy ponies in their battle against “the zombie robot argument“: Technological change and automation absolutely can, and have, displaced particular workers in particular economic sectors. But technology and automation also create dynamics (for example, falling relative prices of goods and services produced with fewer workers) that help create jobs in other sectors. And even...

Paul Krugman talks unions: Trucking And Blue-Collar Woes MAY 23, 2017 5:11 PM May 23, 2017 What with everything else going on, this Trip Gabriel essay on truckers hasn’t gotten as much attention as it should. But it’s awesome — and says a lot about what is and isn’t behind the decline of blue-collar wages. Trucking used to be a well-paying occupation. Here are wages of transportation and warehousing workers in today’s dollars, which have fallen by a third...

A thought for Sunday: no, Trump approval *still* isn’t imploding. BUT … Democrats continue to delude themselves about Presidential approval polls — with one very big possible exception. In the first place, can we all agree that Trump has had a particularly nasty last several weeks? Including firing Comey, blabbing secrets to the Russian ambassador, blabbing about our submarines to the Philippines’ now-dictator, compromising the intelligence sources of Israel...

Of Memorial Day and Confederate statues Memorial Day is a particularly fitting time to write about the issue of Confederate monuments. That’s because Memorial Day originated as a day set aside to honor the Civil War dead, not just those who fought for the Union, but those on both sides, including those who died in service of the Confederacy.  It was part of the process of magnanimous victory which enabled the country to heal, perhaps epitomized nowhere better...

Some Saudi-US History Given Donald Trump’s new commitment to support military adventurism by Saudi Arabia in Yemen and more generally against Iran, it might be worth reconsidering how this alliance developed. The beginning for Saudi Arabia was in 1744 when a wandering radical cleric, Mohammed bin Abdel-Wahhab met up with a local chieftain, Mohammed bin Saud in the village of Diriyah, whose ruins are now located in the suburbs of the current Saudi Arabian...

by Dale Coberly MAYA MACGUINEAS COMMITTEE FOR A RESPONSIBLE FEDERAL BUDGET (CRFB) TALKS BACKWARDS ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY IN THE NEW YORK TIMES…NOBODY THE WISER Here is what she said: “and “protecting” Social Security and Medicare, a reassuring political promise that removes over one-third of the budget from consideration.” “trying to square the circle of balancing the budget while taking the largest contributors to spending growth — Social Security and...

Marginalized populations and employment during expansions Dean Baker ran a graph over the weekend showing an apparent conundrum: namely, that in the last several years there has been an increase in the percentage of those employed who only have a high school diploma vs. a slight *decrease* in employment among those with a college degree.  Here’s his graph: This caught my attention, because I actually don’t think this is such an anomaly.  So I went back and...

by Joseph Joyce Capital Flows and Domestic Responses The international impact of financial shocks became apparent during the global financial crisis. But how do financial flows affect economic conditions during non-crisis times? And are there ways to shelter the domestic economy from these flows? Some new evidence from the IMF seeks to answer these questions. IMF economists Bertrand Gruss, Malhar Nabar and Marcos Poplawski-Ribeiro, in a chapter in the IMF’s...