How restrictive are “real” interest rates?  – by New Deal democrat This post is inspired by a Xtweet from Paul Krugman this morning, in which he pointed out that if we measured inflation the same way it is done in Europe, the Yoy% change would be only 1.7%. That got me wondering, since the primary difference is how shelter inflation is measured, just how restrictive is current Fed policy across a number of the most important inflation...

A bit of The Atlantic’s Anne Lowrey on high prices and increasing prices. The article says there are few or great tools a president has at their disposable. I beg to differ on Annie’s comment. One of those tools a President Kamala has is take the issue to the citizenry making the case many of the high prices do not need to be. They are artificially high because industry can control supply which can drive prices up. This is no surprise the nation...

Future Economic Collapse Ahead?

According to Nate DiCamillo at Quartz, “September is shaping up to be another good month for consumer sentiment.” AB: I believe there are other aspects which would make the citizenry even feel better then decreasing gasoline prices. The economy is getting there, just not fast enough for many, and people show their doubts. Gasoline pricing dropping is short term. Inevitably, oil and gasoline prices will continue to increase in pricing and faster...

Mainstream economics is fundamentally flawed. It's like trying to drive a car without knowing how an engine works. Ignoring the role of energy in production is a critical oversight. Imagine a chef who believes cooking is just about mixing ingredients. What happens when they forget to turn on the stove? The meal remains raw, unappetizing, and ultimately inedible. This is what mainstream economics does when it disregards energy. It creates models that are disconnected from...

The title claim is not surprising. But it occurs to me that it follows from how I model prices of production, given stable relative profit rates among industries. I am not original with this modeling. My contribution is analying the choice of technique and exploring how this analysis varies with perturbations of relative markups. In the price equations, s1r, s2r, s3r, and so on are the rate of profits in the various industries. I call r the scale factor for the rate of profits. Given the...

Any fool can reduce debt in the short-term by selling their house, paying off the mortgage and renting a place. Whether you should do that depends upon whether the cost of renting is cheaper than that of borrowing, all things considered. That’s a tricky calculation. But it’s one that households wouldn’t make if they were tied by that “non-negotiable” fiscal rule; they would just cut their mortgage and not worry about the fact that they’ll have to pay the rent after five...

By Isabel Soisson The Copper Courier AB: This piece on the IRA cover quite a bit of territory discussing the Inflation Reduction Act. There is still more that was accomplished under the Biden Administration with the American Rescue Plan 2021 Act. Who would have thought an old president suffering from dementia could have accomplished so much? Listening to Biden for a while. It did not appear like he had a teleprompter and he covered a lot of...

by Emily Atkin Heated World The richest man in the world has a new message about climate change: It’s real, but don’t knock the industry most responsible. “I don’t think we should vilify the oil and gas industry,”  Elon Musk said while speaking about climate change during his two-hour conversation with former president Donald Trump last week. It was a sentiment Musk repeated four times throughout the 10-minute climate discussion....

Speaking like that is emotion and not analysis.