Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

The spending transition from goods to services  – by New Deal democrat Today is the last day for a very light economic week of news. One item worth addressing is the relative state of consumer purchases of goods vs. services in this pandemic recovery, because it appears to be unique. Let’s start with the ISM non-manufacturing report, which was released on Tuesday. Unlike the manufacturing report, which bounced back slightly into expansion...

by Joseph Joyce China and the Debt Crisis Sri Lanka is not the first developing economy to default on its foreign debt, and certainly won’t be the last. The Economist has identified 53 countries as most vulnerable to a combination of “heavy debt burdens, slowing global growth and tightening financial conditions.” The response of China to what will be a rolling series of restructurings and write-downs will reveal much about its position in the...

As usual, what I found in My In-Box. Things I would like to write, have barely enough time to read, and pass them on to AB readers. Nothing here on the present battle between the DoJ and a neophyte Federal judge who lacks broad based experience as a federal prosecutor and in civil trials. I had an article, read it, and did not realize what I had read and who it applied to at the time. Then the storm hit. The text as written by an attorney who...

 Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens  at Economic Policy Institute take a look at why wages have been relatively flat compared to productivity gains in the US economy, inequality of compensation, and declining share of income between labor and capital. Broad strokes but helps with context and suggesting ideas for current government actions. Inequalities abound in the U.S. economy, and a central driver in recent decades is the widening gap...

NYT article Pace of Climate Change Sends Economists Back to Drawing Board, Lydia DePillis, Aug. 25, 2022, a reporter on the Business desk at The New York Times. Previously, she covered federal agencies at ProPublica, the national economy at CNN, the Texas economy at The Houston Chronicle, labor and business at The Washington Post, the technology industry at The New Republic and real estate at the Washington City Paper. She grew up in Seattle and...

In chemistry, and in physics, a positive feedback loop usually yields an explosion. In biology, it is a population explosion. In electronics, it might be an unpleasant screech. In economics, both housing bubbles and inflation are products of a positive feedback loop. In re Global Warming: The melting of permafrost due to Global Warming releases methane a greenhouse gas which increases Global Warming, …, …. The melting of Arctic Ice reduces...

Continued good news for consumers on gas prices There’ll be lots of economic news starting tomorrow, but for today let’s pause and take a look at the energy situation. Here’s a look at oil prices in the past year up through yesterday from CNBC: And here’s a look over the same time period from Gas Buddy: Here’s a close-up of gas prices for the past month: Gas prices follow oil prices with typically a delay of several weeks. Oil prices...

A tweet sent me to this column Ezra Klein wrote long, long ago in a city far away. In the heady day of April 8 2021, Klein discussed Joseph Biden’s radicalism and contrasted it with Barack Obama’s caution. I remember. Biden had just signed the American Rescue plan and was proposing what would be called the infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act (ne’ Build Back Better). “I covered him in the Senate, in the Obama White House, in the...

Europe is facing far more energy issues than what the US has faced. We moan about increase gasoline prices which still have not reached the height of them in 2008 when inflation is taken into consideration. David touches upon considerations to be taken in determining a solution. “Price gouging or shortage. Choose one.” – The one-handed economist, David Zetland I’m a political-economist from California who now lives in Amsterdam. During a...

First warnings — as usual I am writing on a topic discussed by many experts and I am not an expert. It is very often debated whether social welfare programs should be means tested (available only to people with low income or to people with low income and low wealth). An alternative is universal programs which are provided also to high income people (Medicare, Social Security old age and survivor pensions, K-12 public school, police protection, fire...