Peter Dorman, Econospeak, A Racist Screed in the New York Times Really bad, misguided, even malicious writing serves a purpose, showing in extreme form the faults that, more subtly expressed, can pass under the radar.  That’s my reaction to this execrable column from today’s New York Times on the violation the author felt when her front lawn […]

Blogger RJS, Focus on Fracking, Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at an 18 1/2 Year Low; Gasoline Supplies Rose by Most in 22 Weeks on a 22 Week Low in Demand The Latest US Oil Supply and Disposition Data from the EIA US oil data from the US Energy Information Administration for the week ending November 26th […]

Blogger RJS, Focus On Fracking, OPEC Decides to Increase Production, Natural Gas Prices Fall by the most in 8 years and maybe most ever Oil for the sixth consecutive week this week, as OPEC decided to increase production even as a Omicron surge loomed . . . after falling 10.4% to $68.15 a barrel last […]

Disposable time as a common pool resource IV — disposable time as a common pool resource In his Grundrisse, Marx identified surplus labour time as a form of disposable time. That is to say that, under capitalism, it is labour time at the disposal of capital. “The whole development of wealth,” Marx wrote, “rests on the […]

Construction Spending Rose 0.2% in October after Prior Months Were Much Revised Higher, MarketWatch 666, RJS The Census Bureau’s report on construction spending for October (pdf) estimated that the month’s seasonally adjusted construction spending would work out to $1,598.0 billion annually if extrapolated over an entire year, which was 0.2 percent (+/-1.2 percent)* above the revised September […]

Disposable time as a common-pool resource II — Labour is not a commodity  Labour was conventionally regarded as a private good by both classical political economists and conservative thinkers such as Edmund Burke, who argued, “labour is a commodity like every other, and rises and falls according to the demand.” The counterpoint to that view, […]

Disposable time as a common-pool resource III — Labour power as a common pool resource  Human mental and physical capacities to work have elastic but definite natural limits. Those capacities must be continuously restored and enhanced through nourishment, rest and social interaction. Over the longer term that capacity for labour also has to be replenished […]

November jobs report: the only thing keeping the jobs market completely recovering to pre-pandemic levels, is the pandemic itself One month ago, we got very large upward revisions to previous data. This month the big questions I had were whether that would continue and whether the bulge decrease in new jobless claims to a half-century […]

Manufacturing still red hot; construction still very cool Our first November data is out this morning with the forward-looking ISM manufacturing report for October, as well as construction spending for October. Let’s take the ISM report first, since it is an important short leading indicator for the production sector, and in particular its new orders […]

RIP David M. Grether  I have only just now learned that Dave Grether died on Sept. 12 of causes unreported at age 82. He was an emeritus prof of econ at Cal Tech.  He received his PhD in 1969 from Stanford in econometrics. He soon was at Cal Tech where he spent the rest of […]