November inflation tame again, with the economy weak, but real wage gains strong Consumer prices rose 0.2% in November on a seasonally adjusted basis, but declined -0.1% unadjusted: As shown in the above graph, a November decline in prices is typical. This year’s decline was less than either of the past two years.On a YoY […]
Prof. Peter Dorman of Evergreen College writes at EconoSpeak and portrays Matt Yglesias’s retrospective on how the healthcare establishment failed the public when passing information on facemasks, hand-washing, distancing, etc., and how Covid is transmitted. The direct result of not following these practices or casting doubt upon them is an elevation of Covid cases which […]
Given the makeup of the Supreme Court after 3 conservative appointments to the court, I was concerned as to what the outcome of the Court’s decision might be. Whether they would agree with Texas and trump was the concern. The italicized sentence is basically the Court’s decision. The note from Alito and Thomas being an […]
The new AB commenting and posting has been up for at least a week now. I would like to hear what “you” the commenters are seeing or experiencing when you comment. Please let us know so we can correct or improve what has been changed. Letting us know what you like is helpful also. Some […]
Ophelia at “Butterflies and Wheels” has a commentary about the protests in front of the home of Democratic Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson which makes for a good read along with the comments. Follow the link. It is one thing to write a letter of protest to a politician and quite another to invade […]
JOLTS report for October: similar to previous 2 recoveries, but a decline in actual hiring may be a warning This morning’s JOLTS report for October showed a jobs market recovery that, for one month at least, paused. Openings and quits were up (good), but layoffs and discharges were also up (bad) while hires were down […]
Our friend Donald Boudreaux is at it again, dispensing misleading statistics that just so happen to favor libertarian outcomes. Two days ago Boudreaux posted some data on hospital capacity that seem to suggest that we do not need to worry about hospitals getting overwhelmed with COVID patients because capacity utilization over time is flat. As […]
Jobless claims rise: a break in the trend? This week’s new and continuing jobless claims all rose off of last week’s pandemic lows, but while I suspect the downward trend has broken, I don’t think we can say so decisively yet. On an unadjusted basis, new jobless claims rose by 228,982 to 947,504. Seasonally adjusted […]
Noah Smith wrote a very interesting post on how macroeconomists are behaving very differently in 2020 than in 2008-9 : The new macro: “Give people money” . He notes two differences : first there is little discussing of theory or of the models used in most peer reviewed articles, second there is (as far as […]