Whither Ukraine? Or “wither Ukraine?” some might suggest? But no, after nearly 30 years of serious economic stagnation and massive corruption, along with losing territory to neighboring Russia with whom it has on ongoing military conflict, things are looking up there. GDP grew at 4 percent annually last quarter. The hryvnia currency has been the […]
MbS Consolidates Immediate Family Control Of Saudi Oil Industry Saudi Oil Minister al Falih, who also ran ARAMCO, has been replaced by Abdulaziz bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al Sa’ud, half brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al Sa’ud, (MbS),who was Ambassodor to the US untile the Khahoggi murder got hot between USA […]
Is Doing Environmental Economics Especially Depressing? We have now learned that on Aug. 27 last week Matin Weitzman hanged himself, leaving a note citing his failure to share in last year’s Nobel Prize as well as his apparently declining mental acuity. That prize he did not share included William Nordhaus as a recipient for his […]
Does O’Rourke Have The Trade Strategy For Dems Against Trump? I have been posting here periodically on how it seems that the Dems do not seem to have a strong or well-defined position about Trump’s trade wars that seem politically effective or even coherent. The few candidates who have made noise about essentially returning to […]
Martin Weitzman RIP Born on April Fool’s Day in 1942, Martin Weitzman died yesterday on August 27, 2019 at age 77. Several of us here had long advocated that he share the first Nobel Prize to be given for environmental economics. That award seems to have been given last fall, but only William Nordhaus got […]
“Tougher On Trade Than Trump”? This is how the NY Times has presented things day before yesterday, apparently lamenting that the Dem candidates are going to have a tough time presenting themselves as “tougher on trade than Trump.” This somehow presumes that this is what they must do to win the election, and at least […]
A Serious Problem For Dems It is that progressive Dems some time ago glommed onto the idea that protectionism is “progressive.” It has been going on so long and has become so ingrained that Bernie Sanders has been running around bragging about how he is more protectionist than Trump. Elizabeth Warren has been a bit […]
Origin of the 2 Percent Inflation Target I have made most of these comments as comments on Econbrowser and Angry Bear (an excellent post by Robert Waldman), as well as on Econbrowser in response to a serious post by Jeffrey Frankel. I note that pgl has added useful comments on this matter in the other […]
Degeneration of Bipartisan Blog Sites: Econbrowser This is probably just a whiny complaint of well-known and long running issues. Indeed for a long time most blog sites (not to mention most twitterspheres and Instogram Idiotspheres) have been mono-partisan in those who participate in their discussions/debates. This has been true for a long time for most […]
Hannity Calls For/Predicts War With Iran OK, sorry if this is just over the top, but this evening Trump’s close pal, Sean Hannity, has gone over the top both predicting and clearly supporting a full blown attack on Iran, “take out all their nuclear facilities.” Curiously a sign of how over the top this is […]