No Fault Auto Insurance On May 30th, the Democratic Governor of Michigan Gretchen Whitmer, signed what was called a bipartisan effort by the Republican controlled legislature and a few of the Democratic members to solve the problems of expensive automotive insurance in Michigan. Due to redlining, other nefarious schemes, and a lack of transparency to […]
It is possible to cause a huge (short term possibly reversed) increase in carbon capture by algae by dumping iron sulfate in the ocean. On the other hand, uh, well, maybe it won’t work and you will just get a few tons of fish (not many tons of carbon containing detritus on the bottom of […]
Does anyone know why coal production is falling out of bed? It is down some 40% from its August level. But coal employment is still near its’ recent peak, which implies that productivity is horrible. I suspect the problem is exports to China. Maybe someone needs to ask Trump about this.
A Decision Theory Case to Chew On Here’s something I posted over on Andrew Gelman’s wonderful blog: I read Alive and thought it unknowingly made a very powerful point about decision theory, that you always have to balance the risks of action against the risks of inaction. The plane was stuck in snow on a slope that led […]
by New Deal democrat Resolving the contradiction between the yield curve and housing If you listen to the yield curve, it is screaming “recession!” If you listen to new home sales, they are saying “no worries!” One of them is wrong. For the last couple of weeks, I have been going back over history in […]
Will China Play The Rare Earth Card In The Trade War? The rumor that China might play its “rare earth card” was the rumor today that helped push down both stock and oil markets according to a variety of reports. The trigger for this seems to have been a visit on May 26 by China’s […]
Trucking tops ailing rail (nerdy) Since the beginning of this year, weekly rail volumes have usually been negative. The full year to date volumes have also been negative YoY: Since all manufactured goods have to be transported to market, if this is something confirmed in other transportation readings, it would clearly be recessionary – as […]
Conservative Economists Discover the Baumol Cost Disease A little over a year ago Mark Perry wrote this nonsense: The chart above (thanks to Olivier Ballou) is an update of a chart we produced last year about this time, and shows the percent changes since January 1997 in the prices of selected consumer goods and services, along with […]