Being an economist can be frustrating. Most people do not understand how markets work, and economists spend a good deal of time arguing against bad policy ideas that appeal to non-economists, and for good ideas that do not appeal to common-sense. This can sometimes feel like pushing rocks uphill. Plus it can lead people to […]
by David Zetland (originally published at One-handed Economist) Review: Secondhand I read this 2019 book at record speed due to its breezy (“magazine”) tone and discussion of one of my favorite passions: reusing old stuff. A few years ago Adam Minter wrote Junkyard Planet about the trash trade, but many readers told him about how they reused stuff rather than about their […]
Initial claims turn neutral on seasonality, but no red flag As you know, I’ve been monitoring initial jobless claims closely for the past several months, to see if there are any signs of a slowdown turning into something worse. Simply put, if businesses aren’t laying employees off, those same people are consumers who are going […]
Here is the abstract of a new paper by Edward Wolff: The paper analyzes the fiscal effects of a Swiss-type tax on household wealth, with a $120,000 exemption and marginal tax rates running from 0.05 to 0.3 percent on $2,400,000 or more of wealth. It also considers a wealth tax proposed by Senator Elizabeth Warren […]
November real retail sales show consumption still weakly positive Retail sales are one of my favorite indicators, because in real terms they can tell us so much about the present, near term forecast, and longer term forecast for the economy. This morning retail sales for November were reported up +0.2%, while October was also revised […]
In October the real trade deficit fell to $79,133 (million 2012 $) from the third quarter average of $84,713 (million 2012 $), a 6.6% improvement. This implies that the fourth quarter is starting with trade making a significant large boost to fourth quarter real GDP growth. Remember, the trade balance is the difference between two […]
Is The Trump Trade War Over? Probably not, but maybe. The basic problem is that Trump has long wanted to beat up on other nations in a trade war; but now he is getting impeached, he needs positive news, and the stock markets like words of his making trade deals. So we get his trade […]
Exaggerated Benefits for U.S. Farmers from the China Trade News How gullible is Reuters? China will likely hit $50 billion in purchases of U.S. agricultural products, U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday after earlier announcing that he would roll back scheduled tariffs on Chinese imports as Washington and Beijing finalized an initial trade deal. That […]
November average real wage growth stable, but aggregate growth now puts expansion in second place behind 1990s November consumer inflation came in at +0.3%. Since in last Friday’s jobs report average hourly earnings also increased +0.3%, real average hourly earnings were unchanged: In a longer term perspective, this means that real wages remain at 97.9% […]
Smoking At The Fed This is about the now late Paul Volcker, but I shall come in from an odd and particular persprctive. Upfront, I did meet the late Paul Volcker several times, although never in an official situation. Much of “inside” stuff I shall say comes from others. I do not know the details […]