Here we are in a presidential election year, and one of the two major party candidates certain to get the nomination is still claiming the last one was stolen from him. Now, he refers to the criminals who were tried, convicted and sentenced to prison over their Jan 6 crimes as “hostages.” When did the […]

I guess this is the latest installment in my soft landing series. However, it might also be a warning of terrible trouble in the fairly near future (next 5 years). It is certainly proof (if more were needed) that I am clueless. The topic is the US housing market. This is highly related to the […]

The Supreme Court needs to decide whether the 14th Amendment bars Trump from running for or serving as President again, and whether the President – and therefore Trump – enjoys broad criminal immunity for acts taken while in office.  These cases highlight the intrinsically political nature of the Court itself.  Many legal and political commentators […]

The economic graph of the year for 2023  – by New Deal democrat I’ll put up the final Coronavirus update of the year later today, but before we leave 2023, let me put up the graph that I think explains about 90% of the economic data this past year. And here it is: This was […]

I promised a second entry in the series, Soft Landing this time it’s monetary. The question is why didn’t the FED’s monetary tightening cause a recession. There certainly was tightening, the Federal Funds rate rose from 0.07% to 5.33% There certainly were people who predicted a recession in 2023 (hey they still have 4 days […]

Brad DeLong asked me if I had an explanation of how the US economy managed to land softly. He is confident that it is softly landing. This encourages me to actually try to do my job for once and act as a macroeconomist, and also to return to blogging here some. In the spirit of […]

Bruce Webb introduced the Social Security Northwest Plan in 2009.  He credited Arne and Dale as co-authors.  The NW Plan only increases payroll taxes if increases are needed.  For years before 2009 Bruce had confidence that forecasts were too pessimistic, but he was convinced by Arne to consider a plan that included triggers.  Arne’s solution […]

A warning (for comments I guess). I really like to answer rhetorical questions. The answers are quite long. I can semi remember one. Being clever (as he often is*) Matthew Yglesias asked how and when the Democratic Socialists became bitter adversaries of the Social Democrats, which is odd since both phrases are translations of the […]

Toward the end of a very interesting and worthwhile conversation about how right-wing “populism” co-opts righteous anger at established institutions, Vincent Bevins asked Naomi Klein how she would counter that co-optation. Her answer was to advocate a “real left that has a political program that is actually redistributive,” which sounds good until you realize that […]

Comparing energy efficiency of boiling water: household appliances Michael D. Eissenberg, BSME, PE, Leed AP*, and Joel C. Eissenberg, Ph.D.* *co-corresponding authors Abstract Kitchen appliances use various mechanisms to heat, with differences in energy sources and geometry. The goal of this study was to compare energy efficiency across common household appliances. To facilitate comparison, 1 […]