Robert Kuttner on public approval of Trump’s handing of the economy: As general support for Trump keeps sinking, there is one anomaly. According to this July 15 Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, which finds Biden leading Trump by 11 points, fully 54 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the economy. Really? That would be the corona […]
June retail sales: some actual good news; the entirety of the pandemic decline has been reversed Retail sales are the third report for June out of the four main coincident indicators that show whether the economy is in recession or expansion. And they were the third that grew again for the month. In fact, in […]
Industrial production rebounds, but will manufacturing employment continue to do so? Industrial production is the King of Coincident Indicators. The NBER almost always identifies month of the end, and frequently the beginning, of recessions based on the top and bottom of this statistic. This morning it was reported to have risen for the second […]
More Likely Bad Economic Forecasting: This Time From OECD And CBO That would be the quintessential establishment and boringly conventional Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the Paris-based “rich nations’” entity that grew out of the Marshall Plan and has a reputation for excellent data, and also the Congressional Budget Office, generally regarded as bipartisan […]
Capitalism and Class by Ken Melvin Whence this attitude that the working class is expendable and that the middle and upper classes are not? Donald J. Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Betsy DeVos, being the brave, patriotic souls that they are, demand, for the sake of the nation, that the working class step-up and take the […]
Initial and continuing claims, JOLTS show labor market “less awful” improvement continues – for now Weekly initial and continuing jobless claims have been giving the most up-to-date snapshot of the continuing economic impacts of the coronavirus on employment. This week continues the trend of slight improvement (or, more truly, slightly less awful). Below are initial […]
Favoring Hi-Tech Tax Cheats Over Consumers of French Wine Hoping to buy a nice bottle of French wine? Doug Palmer of Poltico has some bad news for you: The Trump administration announced Friday a 25 percent tariff on $1.3 billion worth of French handbags, cosmetics and soaps in retaliation for a digital services tax on U.S. internet […]
Death Comes To My Old Economics Department That would be the one at my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I have learned that on July 6 one of its current members died, Bill Sandholm, an excellent evolutionary game theorist who was about 50 years old. It is a sign of my age that he […]
It’s the Economy by Ken Melvin Ask any group of people who have successfully started a small business and to a person, they will tell you that there had been at least once when it could have gone either way. Eight out of ten fail in those perilous first two years. No doubt some of […]