Continuing claims near 2+ year high; likely the effect of Silicon Valley layoffs  – by New Deal democrat Initial claims rose by 9,000 to a three month high of 224,000 last week. The four-week moving average also rose 5,350 to 207,750. With the usual one-week lag, however, continuing claims rose sharply, by 70,000, to 1.898 million, close to a 2+ year high: On the more important YoY% change basis, initial claims were up 12.6%, while the...

A comment on median vs. mean, and job-stratified wage growth  – by New Deal democrat Before today’s avalanche of data, I wanted to comment briefly on the Employment Cost Index for Q4 that was reported yesterday. This index has the advantage of weighting for type of employment. If low wage workers gain a disproportionate number of jobs, that will tend to hold down *average* wages. But the ECI hold the weighting of low, medium, and high wage...

You can literally use them as a trading system.

Uncovering Wealthy Elites' Government Influence

As the title says, the post is about "moving to a sustainable system of food production within a degrowth paradigm." The basis of the discussion is whether this can take place within the context of "capitalism." Bill argues for the position that it cannot. I have set for reasons previously explaining my agreement with this view. A major reason can be summarized as "perverse incentives." Of course, it is more complicated than that but the rubric "perverse incentives" sums up Marx's notion of...

Pepe Escobar reviews Prof. Glenn Diesen's new book, The Ukraine War & The Eurasian World Order. Escobar recently reviewed Emmanuel Todd's La Défaite de L’Occident (“The Defeat of the West”).The reviews are short and present views that suggest the world order is changing not only politically but also economically as a result of decolonization. This emerging trend portends to grow the pie for all albeit not without growing pains as the dominant parties attempt to maintain their...

Don’t you hate it when you have a great title and no post to go with it. Here is a link

from Asad Zaman and WEA Pedological Blog . . . conventional modern textbooks of economics do not correctly describe monetary economies.. . .  For instance, a popular textbook by Mankiw states that: . . . I am planning to write a textbook on monetary economies. I will draft it section by section and chapter by chapter, and put down the drafts here for feedback and comments. The first section is given below – it is an introduction to the topic, and provides some motivation for the study,...

Social Classes Influence Consumption Behavior

Jag tror på den ensamma människan Jag tror på den ensamma människan, på henne som vandrar ensam, som inte hundlikt löper till vittring, som inte varglikt flyr för mänskovittring: På en gång människa och anti-människa. Hur nå gemenskap? Fly den övre och yttre vägen: Det som är boskap i andra är boskap också i dig. Gå den undre och inre vägen: Det som är botten i dig är botten också i andra. Svårt att vänja sig vid sig själv. Svårt att vänja sig av med sig...