Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

The mayors report in on Income Inequality (and miss the conclusion).

(lightly edited for ease of reading) Yesterday the Conference of Mayors and the Council on Metro Economies and the New American City released a report prepared by IHS Global Insight that is a repeat and thus update of a similar study performed after the 2001 – 2002 recession.  Income and Wage Gaps Across the US. I […]

The Lone Star Strategy or The House that Conservatives built

Having heard Senator Sander’s discussion on the floor, I thought the outing of the republican vision for this nation in total should be preserved on the net in writing.  People hear bits and piece but never put the entire picture together.   Maybe reading the list will help people picture the finished house the conservative mind […]

Jobs before, jobs after

The NELP offers a look at the trend for job creation. And there is the caveat that of the productivity gains post recession, over 90% went to those with income over $450,000. http://www.nelp.org/page/-/Job_Creation/LowWageRecovery2012.pdf?nocdn=1

The Scariest Graphic I Made All Week, or, Still More on Excess Reserves and "Money"

One of the nice things about the Kauffman Foundation’s Blogger Conference is the time to let the mind wander and look at data after having your brain scoured. One of the worst things is realizing too late that you’ve got a Really Ugly Graphic, and most of the people who could help with it are […]

The Flaw in the Reasoning…

Brad DeLong (pulled from an otherwise-spot-on post): Two years ago, after all, the recession was over. The Recovery: I started these from the first month after NBER’s recession end date. Note that there is one true, consistent growth line—sadly, that’s the mean (average) duration of Unemployment. If this is victory, Pyrrhus of Epirus had nothing […]

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Largest Absolute Drop in Private Employment Since the US Started Keeping Records

A commenter at Steve Benen’s Washington Monthly blog was grousing (correctly, as spencer notes in comments) that Benen had allocated all of the 2009 change (read:drop) in private-sector jobs to Obama, while GWB was in office for the first 19.5 daysduring the time the employment data for January was gathered. Turns out that there were […]

When I Steal A Blog Post, I Leave A Link

I wanted to look at the WSJ job database, suspecting what I might find, but currently lack the bandwidth in a major way. Fortunately, Noah took some (more) time from his thesis (“distraction from productive activity”) and did the dirty work. Apparently, being a STEM undergraduate isn’t the path to Nirvana:* I went through the […]

Obama’s First Fifteen Months, Composite Edition

Brad DeLong has two posts, one from Ezra “I’m a liberal who is safe for the Washington Post” Klein and one from Mike “I actually looked at the data” Konczal. Brad deals with Ezra’s folly: I think a B+ is too high a grade–largely because one big task of 2009 was to set up the […]

Why Are You Out There?

When someone attempts to impede democracy actions are good things: Writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau was once locked up for refusing to pay a poll tax. He opposed the tax on moral grounds – in a democracy, he argued, a man shouldn’t have to pay to vote…. That night, so the story goes, Thoreau […]