How Much Do the NATO Members Spend on National Defense? Josh Marshall provides a nice discussion of the difference between how NATO is funded versus how much each of its members spends on national defense, which begins with: As we move toward the NATO Summit and the Putin-Trump summit, I thought it made sense to review […]
Understanding the simple strategy for the 2018 elections Pretend for a moment that you are a political strategist. Your party is the party in power. The opposition has been enraged since the moment of your standard-bearer’s election. In the special and off-year elections since, they have been showing up in unprecedented droves for offices up […]
A teaser about wages and labor force participation I was going to put up a short piece about wages this morning, but it has turned into a longer, more comprehensive piece, so in the meantime, here are some teasers to ponder. 1. There is a direct relationship between the economy generally, and child care costs […]
by Cactusman Bombing for Votes: Public opinion shifts during the Iraq war and implications for future conflicts Despite the recent summit in Singapore, which mostly made for good television and little substance, North Korea appears to be quickly ignoring any promises–whether implicit, explicit, or imagined–made to President Trump to dismantle its nuclear program. In Iran, […]
Don’t say I didn’t warn you (in particular, don’t say I didn’t warn you on September 25 2008). Naked CDS make financial arson profitable. It is also, probably, legal. It seems Blackstone made some money by threatening financial arson (arson meets grenmail). WSJ (via Drum) Blackstone offered Hovnanian a low-cost loan and persuaded the builder […]
The Value of Life and the Metaphor of Choice Perhaps no topic generates such bewilderment between economists and the general public as the monetary valuation of human life, or the value of a statistical life (VSL) to use the term preferred by professional economists. Economists insist that longevity is a commodity bought and sold on […]
The Fed just let Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs off the hook after both failed the required stress tests under Dodd-Frank. The stress test is supposed to predict whether banks and so-called banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs can weather a financial crisis. This is not an instance of if you remember in 2008, […]
Weekly Indicators for July 2 – 6: long term forecast continues to deteriorate June data started out with another strong jobs report, but once again with weak wage growth. Motor vehicle sales and both the ISM manufacturing and nonmanufacturing indexes were very positive as well. May data included and increase in construction spending and factory […]
In Defense of the Francois-Baughman Analysis of the Trump Tariffs Dr. Joseph Francois and Laura M. Baughman are being criticized for writing: This policy brief examines the potential net impacts on U.S. jobs across all industries of the proposed steel and aluminum tariffs applied to targeted steel and aluminum imports from all countries. It does not […]