I’m back to playing with data, so there will probably be more posts coming soon. (Sorry.) Meanwhile, this one was irresistible. FRED® has a “Natural Rate of Unemployment” data series. Apparently, the evil of the United States is that—except for the second half of the Clinton Administration where it was worth people’s while—Americans Just Don’t […]
What happens when you downsize a large number of people? Well, it depends on the cohort downsized. In this case, Figure 1 That’s correct; Average Hourly Earnings skyrocketed from $28.67 to $30.01: up $1.34. For context, that one-month change matches the average hourly earnings growth from September/October of 2018 until March of this year–18 months […]
It’s That Day again. I mostly stayed off Facebook (except for birthday greetings) and Twitter, but even LinkedIn has posts of now-yellowed newspaper articles of survivors–and probably some of those who didn’t. In another ten years, it will be as far from 11 Sep 2001 as that date was from 11 Sep 1973. At least […]
The scary headlines of the past few days have been well-discussed below by Dale Coberly and Barkley Rosser. Data, however, is only as good as its assumptions, and the overall trend is well worth a glance. (Note: I took the 2013-2017 data from BC professor (and director of their Center for Retirement Research) Alicia H. […]
March 27: TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – The United States said on Wednesday it had reached an agreement with three Central American countries to carry out joint police operations in the region, as the Trump administration seeks to stem the flow of migrants across its southern border. The governments of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and the United […]
If you want to understand why Mark Thoma’s 12-year daily-and-then-some blogging effort has become intermittent, consider that President Shit-for-Brains has made his nomination for the person to ru(i)n the World Bank. David Malpass. This David Malpass. The best part of the nomination so far? This Twitter feed from Charles Kenny. Brad DeLong concurs. And I’m […]
Many years ago, Goldman Sachs published research showing that, from about 1995 to 2004, more money had been taken out of S&P 500 companies in dividends and share buybacks than the companies had earned during that period. You would think Boards of Directors and Shareholders would know better than to do it again. You would […]
Via ElNuevoDia at LG&M, “Gamblers are now betting that Kavanaugh will not be confirmed.” The market in question, at PredictIt, seems rather straightforward. Note, though, that the contract only opened five days ago (18 September) and traded consistently in the 60-70% range through yesterday (22 Sep), closing at 61% and only reaching as low as […]
It has been almost ten years since: Bear Stearns folded Lehmann collapsed of its own free will I posted on this blog All of the above Those who guessed “c” or “d” are optimists. Those who are expecting a long series of posts dwelling on the correct answer of “b” (with some references to “a” […]
I’m teaching “Economics for Non-Economists” this semester. This is an interesting experiment, and is strongly testing my belief that you can teach economics without mathematics so long as people understand graphs and tables. (It appears that people primarily learn how to read graphs and tables in mathematics-related courses. Did everyone except me know this?) Since […]