Maybe This Is Not (Technically) A Recession? Here I am using what is the journalistic definition of a “recession,” also used in many nations although not officially in the US, where these things are determined ex post by an NBER committee. Anyway, that “journalistic” definition is that there be two consecutive quarters of negative GDP […]
New coronavirus cases vs. testing in “reopened” States Are new coronavirus infections increasing in States that “reopened” on or about May 1? The jury is still out. The number of infections is up in 4 of the 5 biggest States that have done so, but so are the number of tests. The likelihood that most […]
Abbreviated coronavirus dashboard for May 19: testing improvement continues Here is the update through yesterday (May 18). As usual, significant developments are in italics. The downward trend in new infections and deaths has continued. An important issue is whether we are beginning to see an increase in new infections in States which irresponsibly “reopened.” I will look […]
by New Deal democrat Housing permits and starts plummet in April, but mortgage applications suggest big rebound in May At some point it is going to be safe for the economy to be completely reopened. When that point comes it would be nice if the leading sectors of the economy have already been priming the […]
I am reading this on Bloomberg entitled “Saudi oil rush threatens to disrupt stabilizing U.S. oil market.” These shipments are planned, Saudis are not sending this over out of the goodness of their hearts. Furthermore, the shipments themselves take roughly 21 days to get to the US. The orders were placed over 3 weeks ago. […]
I’m back to playing with data, so there will probably be more posts coming soon. (Sorry.) Meanwhile, this one was irresistible. FRED® has a “Natural Rate of Unemployment” data series. Apparently, the evil of the United States is that—except for the second half of the Clinton Administration where it was worth people’s while—Americans Just Don’t […]
Steve Roth, publisher of Evonomics and at Angry Bear, sends this note and thematic list: Economics Doesn’t Have to Be Amoral The complexity economist Eric Beinhocker writes “economics has painted itself as a detached amoral science, but humans are moral creatures. We must bring morality back into the center of economics in order for people to relate […]
by Ken Melvin Economy’s Role Economy: An Economy is a social entity’s aggregate activity of producing and exchanging goods and services. To date, a large body of knowledge about how economies work has been accumulated; a body of knowledge known as the science of economics. In a Well Functioning Economy, the requisite goods and services are […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for May 11 – 15 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Noteworthy this week is that mortgage rates have fallen to new all-time lows, and mortgage applications, not coincidentally, have rebounded sharply. This is good news since housing normally leads the way in economic […]
A very interesting paper (not peer-reviewed) by a team of Israeli scholars proposes that a more manageable exit from pandemic lockdown might be achieved by implementing a scheme in which employees go in to work for four days and then return to isolation for ten days before repeating the cycle. A variation on the proposal […]