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

Watch Out for Charlie Kirk’s Treacle Tart

“There’s many a fly got stuck in there.” Who is Charlie Kirk? He is the 24-year old executive director and founder of Turning Point USA. Jane Meyer profiled the organization in the New Yorker in December: Based outside of Chicago, Turning Point’s aim is to foment a political revolution on America’s college campuses, in part by […]

Interest rates: no shift in the economic weather yet

Interest rates: no shift in the economic weather yet I wanted to make two comments about what has been happening recently with interest rates, a short term look and a long term look. Today let’s discuss the short term. Since September, long term Treasury interest rates have risen from roughly 2.1% to 2.8%. The two […]

Why Tax Cuts for Rich Dude Will Lead to Little Stimulus

Why Tax Cuts for Rich Dude Will Lead to Little Stimulus Over at Brad DeLong’s blog jonny bakho adds an interesting comment: How much stimulus did the GWBush tax cuts provide? They came during a recession followed by “jobless recovery” made somewhat better by the housing bubble, then burst big time in 2008. How different would the […]

Consumption tax may not make sense

By  Steve Roth   (reposted from Evonomics) Consumption tax may not make sense You often hear calls out there — mostly from Right economists but also from some on the Left — for a consumption tax in the U.S. As presented, it’s a super-simple idea: tally your income, subtract your saving, and what’s left is your consumption. […]

Fraying at the edges? *relative* underemployment increases

Fraying at the edges? *relative* underemployment increases This is a post I’ve been meaning to put up all week (after all, this week was going to be very slow on data and news, right?). As the expansion gets more and more mature, the *relative* performance of certain measures of improvement become more interesting.  One of […]

Drum goes easy on Goldberg

(Dan here…Lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) Drum goes easy on Goldberg It is progress that hack conservatives are bothsidesing now. Jonah Goldberg correctly notes that the problem isn’t just Trump but also broader extreme partizanship. He asserts that both parties are to blame. He seems to know he can’t defend this assertion and declines to […]

Jobless claims make another record low

Jobless claims make another record low One reason not to get excited about the last week’s stock market swoon is that it isn’t being confirmed by any other short term leading indicators.  Most significantly, jobless claims. The 4 week moving average of new jobless claims has fallen below 225,000. This is yet another 40 year […]

Why I’m not impressed by January’s 2.9% YoY wage growth

Why I’m not impressed by January’s 2.9% YoY wage growth I wanted to follow up on why I dissented Friday from the near-consensus take that workers finally got a nice raise, with many citing hikes in the minimum wage. As you may recall, the YoY% change in the average hourly earnings of all employees rose 2.9% […]