Given that title, I’m not sure I need to write a post, since no one will read this post which is really a comment on Simon Wren-Lewis’s post “Left, Right and Macroeconomic Competence.” I thought this title was less openly twitty than “Commenting on Wren-Lewis,” but I will go on to comment on Brad DeLong […]

Lifted from comments from this post, Angry Bear Spencer England further explains oil and markets: Oil production is an unusual business in that virtually all of the cost of getting crude to the refiner is fixed costs while variable cost or current spending is insignificant. Economic theory, at least what you will learn if you […]

Via Dailykos, the story points to the lack of information on police-related killings: … But as Lee (and other reporters) have pointed out, these numbers, striking as they are, just aren’t reliable. Together with some colleagues and help from criminologists, Richard Florida atThe Atlantic magazine’s CityLab took a look in August at the available statistics […]

Bloomberg news points to continued trends in oil production and prices.   Yves Smith also comments here. …Conventional oil producers in OPEC can no longer dictate prices, United Arab Emirates Energy Minister Suhail Al-Mazrouei said in an interview on Nov. 26. Newcomers to the market who have the highest costs and created the glut should […]

My reaction was “tell me something I don’t know already” when I read that phase 1 trials of an Ebola vaccine at the National Institutes of Health have shown that it is safe. My dad works on the NIH campus and he told me about the trial weeks ago. The results were recently published. Trials […]

This Burtless Brookings Blog post really is a must read. Burtless notes that taxes and transfers (including both ARRA and automatic responses to the recession) prevented huge income declines for the lower 60% of US households during the great recession. In contrast high income households were hammered. Federal policy actually worked. The post is a […]

Dan here…sometimes just economics isn’t enough even on an economics blog. This sermon was lightly edited for readability.   by Rev. Nathan Detering  (First Parish Sherborn, MA) Longing for More, Wanting What We Have “Have compassion for everyone you meet even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit, bad manners or cynicism is always […]

Dan here…this piece is originally published at Oxford University Press by Angry Bear Edward Lambert. by Edward Lambert Thanksgiving and the economics of sharing For this American, my favorite holiday has always been Thanksgiving. Why? I have an image in my mind of Native Americans and colonists meeting and sharing food together; they share knowledge […]

Well, it is about time for a higher authority to push strongly for higher wages. The Wall Street Journal has an article about the Bank of Japan’s Governor, Haruhiko Kuroda. Basically, companies need to use their increased profits and reserves to raise labor’s pay. If companies do not raise labor’s pay significantly, Abenomics will fail.