Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Windfall Profits Tax

Again we are getting the right wing line that the windfall profits tax on oil in the 1980s causedoil production to fall and oil imports to rise as Carpe Diem at http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5048766. post a story from Investors Business Daily saying that from 1980 to 1986 oil production fell. Yes, the windfall profits tax was still […]

Oil Price Controls

All the discussion about a holiday from the federal tax on gasoline this summer has brought all kinds of comments out of the woodwork about how government interference in markets, and especially the 1970s oil price controls and windfall profit tax prevented private companies from investing. Such comments seem to start out with some sort […]

Inventories and GDP growth

A lot of ink is being spilled over the inventory numbers in the gdp report. So I though I would just post on one of the available monthly data series on inventories.This shows that the real I/S ratio fell sharply in March. But the gdp report includes nodata on March inventories. This implies that the […]

Employment Report

The Wall Street Journal and others are looking at the headline numbers and reporting that we are seeing another report of moderate employment declines like the last few. But hours worked fell -0.4%, a significantly laarger drop then in the last few months. Moreover, average hourly earnings were only up 0.1% and average weekly wages […]

Liberal Massachusetts Economic Growth

Economy in state outpaces US growth Adds 4,600 jobs through March The Massachusetts economy expanded at a healthy clip in the first three months of the year despite a national economic slowdown, breaking with the recent past when the state suffered longer and deeper recessions than the rest of the United States. The University of […]

Family & Household Real Income Trends

Last Friday Arnold Kling at Econlog and Russell Roberts at Cafehayek commented on Larry Bartels book Unequal Democracy and I made some commentsabout what they were saying. Bartels used family income data in his book and both Arnold and Russell ignored this point and went into long discussion about why household income data is so […]

UNEMPLOYMENT DURATION

Cactus ran across this data and sent this chart along. It implies two things to me. One, the average duration of unemployment was much higher in this cycle then it was in the 1990s cycle. This is in line with all the other data showing the recent cycle to be weak by historic norms. Two, […]

PROFITS,CAPITAL SPENDING & PRICE CONTROLS

Within the Leading Index report there are series on the concurrent and lagging index. One component within these releases is a monthly estimate of unit labor cost in manufacturing. It is not the most reliable economic indicator and is subject to major revisions, but right now it is sending some very interesting information. It implies […]

FOOD AND ENERGY CONSUMPTION

With all the discussion of food and energy it helps sometimes to look at the data and put things in perspective. One reason that the rise in food and energy is having a smaller impact than in the 1970s is that they now account for a much smaller share of consumption. Food and energy fell […]

Commodities and rates

Stormy earlier discussed the Frankel thesis that low rates leads to higher commodity prices.I can see the argument, but I do not buy it. Rather I have alway looked at it the other way and viewed commodity prices as a leading indicator of interest rates. Rising commodity prices are a sign of strong worldwide economic […]