So the question has arisen as to whether the yield curve in Japan has inverted before its most recent recessions. And the answer is no… Credit seeking alpha for this chart and Alan Thomson at Terra Firma Financial for digging it out. (JGB is Japanese government bonds.) Before the last 3 recessions in Japan the […]
CORP. TAX CUT = GROWTH? Um, Not So Much — Contrary to popular conservative dogma, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has found no substantial correlation between corporate tax reductions and economic growth since 1947.
by Dale Coberly How to Sound Insane by Talking Like a Bi Partisan Expert on Social Security I apologize for the next couple of paragraphs because they sound overworked and insane, but that’s what happens when you try to illustrate the way Washington talks about Social Security. Try to imagine you have to buy a medicine […]
Via Economist’s view: Mark Thoma writes: This is a research summary from the NBER Digest. It discusses work from Autor, Dorn, Hanson, and Song that finds “Workers bear substantial costs as a result of the ‘shock’ of rising import competition”: Employment Effects of International Trade, by Claire Brunel, NBER Digest: In the past two decades, […]
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/03/junk-health-insurance/index.htm Consumer Reports, which also destroys that story. They take a look at the Florida woman’s cancelled health policy and compare it to what she could—affordably—get by shopping on the exchange. Barrette’s expiring policy is a textbook example of a junk plan that isn’t real health insurance at all. If she had ever tried […]
Many people look for an inverted yield curve to signal a recession. The track record is good. The yields on longer term maturities decline in relation to shorter term yields. Let me show a version of the inverted yield chart that I haven’t seen anyone do yet. I take the 3-year Treasury constant maturity rate […]
AB had a post on Congressman Steve King, an advocate of austerity and shut down yet received $9.17 billion in subsidies 1995-2012 for his district without offering cut backs for his district to share the sacrifices needed for austerity. Brad DeLong points us to another stunning set of subsidies, this example for Congressman Tim Huelskamp: […]
Here is a chart comparing the savings rates of the US and China… Thanks to a friend in Chile who sent me this chart from Fidelity International. On the x-axis is GDP per capita. So the more economically advanced countries are to the right. The chart on the left shows that China has low household […]
…hybrid eclipse of Nov. 3 will be a special case: here the eclipse starts out as annular, then after only 15-seconds it will transition to a total eclipse, and then it remains total up to the very end of the eclipse path. The last time this happened was on Nov. 20, 1854 and the next […]
As I said the other day, Mr. Krugman was saying that the economy was awash in excess savings. His words implied that the US was awash in excess savings. Then I said yesterday that the truth was in fact that the world was awash in excess savings. Yesterday, Mr. Krugman clarified his point and said… […]