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

Your Tax Dollars Subsidizing Methane Gas Emissions

Sandwichman at Econospeak has a post up on subsidizing Methane and the BLM. It fits in with the Bundy take over of the Wildlife Refuge Bldg. He credits 538 Politics for this exclusive The Armed Oregon Ranchers Who Want Free Land Are Already Getting A 93 Percent Discount We are paying for the air pollution […]

Universities and Donations – Western Carolina University

What does a public university do when a donation to it comes with strings? This is the situation Western Carolina University finds itself in today as a $2 million donation is being given to it by a Charles Koch Foundation to establish a Center for the Study of Free Enterprise under BB&T bank sponsored department […]

NAIRU V Estimation

by Marco Fioramanti and Robert Waldmann This is the second to last post on the European Commissions DG -Ec-Fin estimates of cyclical unemployment for the purposes of calculating output gaps. This estimate is called unemployment minus the NAWRU (non accelerating wage inflation rate of unemployment). We will call unemployment – NAWRU “cyclical unemployment” even though […]

Brad DeLong Rejoins the Reality-Based Community; Mark Thoma tells us why it is so

Even if his inspiration for doing so comes from (of all places) the HuffPo, This is spot-on: Unless something big and constructive in the way of global economic policy is done soon, we will have to change Stiglitz’s first name to ‘Cassandra’ — the Trojan prophet-princess who was always wise and always correct, yet cursed […]

Is there a model in which a Country which borrows in it’s own currency has a Greek style crisis ?

usa = Greece ? A challenge. Paul Krugman asks how a country like the USA could have a Greek style crisis. In his Mundell-Fleming Lecture Krugman defined Greek style crisis twice ” a Greek-style crisis of soaring interest rates” and ” a Greek-style scenario of higher rates and a slump in the real economy” . […]

Checking in on Consumption for Capital and Labor

Periodically I present updated information about consumption from capital and labor income. Using the NIPA accounts and labor share, I can separate consumption by capital and labor. Total consumption is trending steadily upward. Even with consumption trending steadily, in 2013 consumption by capital income began to move sideways, while consumption by labor income began to […]

Dean Baker: “An Aging Society Is No Problem When Wages Rise”

The argument behind MJ.ABW in relation to Social Security (More Jobs. At Better Wages) by real economist and mentor Dean Baker of CEPR. Also an implicit underpinning of the Northwest Plan for a Real Social Security Fix. The whole thing is short if you want to read through: An Aging Society Is No Problem When […]