The Philly Fed state-by-state diffusion index of economic expansion This comes from the Philly Fed’s state-by-state coincident index, via Bill McBride. The graph below shows the number of states showing increasing economic activity: In December the number of states in expansion was 39. Historically over the past 40 years, that number dropping to 35 or […]
Live-blogging the Fifteenth Amendment: January 28, 1869 Note: I have fallen a little behind, due to traveling. My apologies! I am making a concerted effort to catch up. Today’s installment is particularly important on the issue of gerrymandering. On January 28, Rep. Charles Stewart, a Republican from New York, spoke with reference to the proposed […]
December 2019 real personal income and spending Real personal income and spending are both coincident indicators. They don’t tell us where the economy is going, but they do give us a snapshot of how ordinary Americans are doing. In December, real income declined by less than -0.1%. Real spending rose by less than +0.1%: Figure […]
Everybody’s Talkin’ ‘Bout Taxes–especially Wealth Taxes and Mark-to-Market of Capital Gains Not surprisingly for those of you who are members of the ABA Tax Section, there is a meeting of that group next week in Florida when a thousand tax lawyers (give or take a few) will be talking about everything from basis to wealth […]
Guns and Commas I am glad that the large pro-gun rights rally in Richmond on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day ended without any violence as had been threatened by some people around the US. That is nice, but it does not end the unpleasant situation legal situation that has arisen here in Virginia. As of […]
(Dan here,,,at lunch the other day a friend asked about the great prices for stocks. This post by Thomas Palley caught my attention as a well written post on the nuances between stocks and finance and the 80% who do not own many stocks and the economy of losers and winners. ) by Thomas […]
Bloomberg’s Plan for Addressing Economic Inequality: not a wealth tax A bit ago (Jan 8, 2020), the New York Times described Michael Bloomberg’s plan1 for addressing the income and wealth inequality in the United States that has been a constant topic of discussion by Democratic candidates. Briefly, as with the robber barons of Teddy Roosevelt’s […]
The Democratic Debate in Des Moines: progressive candidates on means testing versus universality Dana Chasin at 2020 Vision does a good job of encapsulating key issuesthat surface in the Democratic debates. Let’s get this out first: most listeners will admit that the debates seem both too long and too short, as mentioned on Stephen Henderson’s […]
Tyler Cowen today flags a paper by Currie, Kleven, and Zwiers on changing practices in economics, and highlights the following: Panel A illustrates a virtually linear rise in the fraction of papers, in both the NBER and top-five series, which make explicit reference to identification. This fraction has risen from around 4 percent to 50 […]
For MLK Day: unemployment by race In observance of Martin Luther King’s birthday, almost all US markets are closed and there is no economic data. So on this day let’s see the extent to which economic opportunity in several neutral metrics has improved since the passage of the Civil Rights Acts in the 1960s. Here […]