I have to link to this column, which is better than Krugman’s average. It is mostly Krugman’s usual shrill praise of fiscal stimulus. I find two things notable. One is that he has no time or column inches for unconventional monetary policy. He’s back to “monetary policy was ineffective because we were at the zero […]
If Trump applies a 25% tariff on a $1.00 item the price will go to somewhere from $1.00 to $1.25. At $1.00 domestic producers have have been building all they can to sell at $1.00. In the short run they can not build more capacity so the domestic producer can raise their price to $1.25, […]
Kevin Hassett Needs Remedial Arithmetic Kevin DOW 36000 Hassett was sent out to the White House press to lie about real wage growth. Or maybe he just proved he seriously needs remedial math for another reason besides one that Brad DeLong notes: Glassman and Hassett get the math of the Gordon equation for valuing the stock market […]
This is a brilliant Twitter essay. Click the link, but I think it can be partly summarized with the first and last two tweets. 1/I noticed Brit Hume defending Tucker Carlson’s remarks about diversity today, and it made me think about how ideas go from the political extremes to the political mainstream. I kind of […]
Some History In 1980, a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine by the Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program stated “the risk of addiction was low when opioids such as oxycodone were prescribed for chronic pain.” It was a brief statement by the doctors conducting the study which was cited many […]
New article on tax increment financing in Missouri shows impact of KS/MO border war After several years of work, my colleague Susan G. Mason (Boise State University) and I have published a new article on TIF in Missouri, specifically in the St. Louis and Kansas City metropolitan areas. “Exploring Patterns of Tax Increment Financing Use […]
Scenes from the August jobs report 1. The strong trend of people entering the jobs market and getting jobs remains intact Here’s a nice graph put together by Kevin Drum at Mother Jones showing both a linear and curvilinear trend line (which are nearly identical) (red) with the prime age employment to population ratio (blue): […]
Next Friday could be a very bad day somewhere along the East Coast I think I may have mentioned once or twice that I am a nerd, right? So, last year during hurricane season I got hooked on a site called Tropical Tidbits. The neat thing about this site — well, from a nerdy point of […]
by New Deal democrat August producer data goes in the opposite direction from the consumer I have a new post, “Producers are Hot*, but Consumers Maybe Not,” up at Seeking Alpha. in which I contrast the white hot ISM manufacturing report with the lackluster motor vehicle sales and residential construction — the two biggest durable consumer […]