Larry Summers on Treasury Secretary Mnuchin (via WP), to put it mildly: Last week I suggested that I felt sorry for Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. He found himself forced by circumstance and his president to say and do things that undermined his and Treasury’s credibility. I wish there was an external force that could be […]
Lifted from comments by Dale Coberly… This year’s Social Security Trustees Report seems to be late as usual. But this is the LAST year that a gradual increase in the payroll tax can begin and still solve some of the less understood problems of the projected shortfall in SS funding: This is mostly that a […]
by Peter Dorman (originally published at Econospeak) Climate of Complete Incomprehension I finally got around to reading the NY Times new “responsible conservative”, Bret Stephens’, call for skepticism and moderation on climate change. He adopts an attitude that exudes reasonableness and rejection of hubris. Complicated modeling is an uncertain business and often fails; just look […]
This isn’t actually news, but it’s news to me, and it’s something you need to know. Greg LeRoy sent me an article by James Meek in London Review of Books (20 April 2017) that he’d been sent by a friend, documenting more EU-permitted job piracy by Poland that preceded the case I discuss at length […]
by Barkley Rosser Is Authoritarian Nationalism Mostly A Rural Phenomenon? Offhand it looks like maybe it is. In the US Trump won overwhelmingly in rural areas while losing all of the largest cities. Yes, he took some mid-size declining industrial ones like Youngstown, OH and Erie, Pa, while losing some rural areas in places like […]
by New Deal democrat Two hits and a miss on GDP and wages We got two pieces of good news from the GDP report this morning, and one piece of bad news for workers. First, from the important long leading housing sector, real private fixed residential investment rose again to a new post-recession high: This […]
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Via Vox: One size does not fit all: On the heterogeneous impact of free trade agreements Can empirical research on past FTAs shed light on this uncertainty? To date, most studies that quantify the effects of trade agreements have either focused on obtaining a common average effect across all agreements (e.g. Baier and Bergstrand 2007, […]
by Barkley Rosser Financial Times Messes Up On Italy I have for a long time thought the Financial Times to be the best newspaper in the world, but now I am going to play Dean Baker beating the press on it. I think they are slipping, and the sign is a story that appeared in […]
by Kenneth Thomas European Union ends relocation subsidies This isn’t actually news, but it’s news to me, and it’s something you need to know. Greg LeRoy sent me an article by James Meek in London Review of Books (20 April 2017) that he’d been sent by a friend, documenting more EU-permitted job piracy by Poland […]