Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

The labor market closes out 2021 on the best note yet The final economic data in 2021 was this morning’s report on initial and continued jobless claims. And the good news for workers continued. New claims declined back under 200,000 to 198,000, the best pandemic showing except for November 20’s 194,000, and December 4’s 188,000. The 4 week average of new claims declined to 199,250: This is the best showing for the 4 week average in over...

A Free Market is Always Full of Cheap Ideas I may have scoffed in the past at the notion of “the marketplace of ideas” but I am coming around to think that maybe it’s not such a bad metaphor. Back in the days of primitive economy, families, clans, tribes produced and consumed their own subsistence. If a surplus was produced beyond what was to be set aside for contingencies, it might be given as a gift to a neighboring group, setting up the...

A Looming Anniversary Passes  Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the end of the Soviet Union.  I previously posted here about this looming anniversary, arguing that the large troop buildup of Russian troops on the Ukrainian border along with the many strong demands being made by V.V. Putin of various parties reflected his high awareness of this looking anniversary, which has been only barely mentioned or noticed in the western media.   As it...

It’s A Wonderful Life: Faux Populism  Somewhere I never saw a full version of this classic, Its a Wonderful Life, but here it is on Christmas Eve, an official Christmas classic. I was always suspicious of it, from all I had heard, but it looks less worth than I had heard. I mean, really, local bank owner gets into real estate problems? And the well-intentioned owner is somehow some great hero? He is offered total control of local monopolies. Heck,...

Record 9.6% Annual Increase in November Producer Price Index; Record 6.9% YoY Increase in Core Prices; Record 7.1% YoY Increase for Final Demand Services, Record 14.9% Increase for Final Demand Goods, and a 46+ year Record for Prices of Intermediate Goods, RJS, MarketWatch 666 The seasonally adjusted Producer Price Index (PPI) for final demand rose 0.8% in November, as prices for finished wholesale goods rose 1.2% while margins of final services...

Total supplies at an 83 month low; total demand at a record high; distillates demand at 18+ year high; global shortage at 1,210,000 bpd, Focus On Fracking, RJS Strategic Petroleum Reserve approaching a 19 year low; oil + products supplies drop to an 83 month low; total oil product demand sets a record high, led by distillates demand at 18+ year high; global oil shortage at 1,210,000 barrels per day in November as OPEC output falls 563,000 barrels...

Whole Lotka Shakin’ Goin’ On In a 1967 festschrift for Maurice Dobb, Richard Goodwin published an influential paper, “A Growth Cycle” on the “class struggle” model of cycles in economic growth. I only became aware of this famous paper because it had occurred to me that the dynamics of relative surplus population, necessary labour time, and socially necessary labour time might resemble a Lotka-Volterra predator-prey model. Goodwin’s model dealt...

—We study history in order to better understand what is going on now, to be better able to look into the future. — The Great Depression was a manifestation of the utter and complete failure of capitalism. Social Security, unemployment, and Welfare were implicit admissions of this failure. Capitalism had spectacularly failed to provide for labor, therefore capitalism should have borne the cost of Social Security and Welfare. The capitalists,...

Production, layoffs, housing hit the positive trifecta in November, New Deal democrat We got a blizzard of November and December data this morning across all three – coincident, short leading, and long leading – timeframes: industrial production, jobless claims, and housing permits and starts. All three were positive. Let’s start with the King of Coincident Indicators, industrial production, which rose 0.5% in November. Manufacturing production...

I am mainly linking to this fairly important article by Dan Diamond in The Washington Post. Diamond quotes many people arguing that the US really should do more to get everyone in the world who is willing to take the vaccine vaccinated. I am going to move on quickly to how this could be done, because I think it is obvious that it should be done. I think I will try to get a few silly things out of the way. What about other rich countries ? Is it...