An article by Peter Bernstein is circulating that is such a good analysis of the economic environment that I though it was worth posting on Angry Bear. The Shape Of The Future By Peter L. Bernstein Three months ago, we wrote, “[T]he economic malaise will not be brief, even though its depth is uncertain. The […]
When discussing real income growth one of the points often made by conservatives and libertarians is that the average data on real income is irrelevantly because it does not measure the same people over time. There is some validity to this point. For example, an individual captured in the snapshot of income data in 1970 […]
Here are some charts to demonstrate what I was talking about. the recent drop in US bond yields has not been accompanied by a similar drop in European rates.Consequently the spread between US and foreign bonds has narrowed and it no longer compensates foreigners for the currency risk they take when investing in the US.The […]
Those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it. Just to put things in perspective, the inflation rate was 4.4%, the same as it is right now, when Nixon imposed price controls in 1971. P.S. He knew the inflation rate was slowing. But he imposed price controls as part of his package to […]
Cool it everybody. If you look at the historical data you will see that it is a very normal cyclical development for the participation rate to drop in the early stages of a recession. There is nothing funny oR out of line with the data.
The February index of aggregate hours worked was 107.3 as compared to a 4th quarter average of 107.7. That implies that first quarter hours worked are falling at about a 1.5% annual rate. As a first approximation that implies that first quarter real GDP growth will be about the same. Of course this depends on […]
We keep hearing from the conservatives-libertarian that we need lower taxes on capital gains and dividends to encourage capital spending or investments. But when I look at the record of the impact of lower taxes on capital on investment I am hard pressed to see the benefits such lower taxes are suppose to deliver. The […]
The other point from my earlier chart on health care spending worth noting is that in the PCE data health care accounts for around 20% of consumer spending. In contrast, medical care only has a weight of 6.2% in the CPI. Since health care prices generally rise some two to three percentage points faster then […]
I was looking at some data yesterday and encountered a big surprise. I suppose like almost everyone I was under the impression that health care spending was growing much faster then the economy and absorbing an ever growing share of resources. This theme dominates much discussion of health care issues, particularly projections of the federal […]