Janet Yellen said today that there is still considerable slack in the economy in terms of labor and capital. So there is less pressure to tighten monetary policy earlier. Just for the record, from my own research there is little spare capacity left… Here is my graph… Warning! The potential GDP used in the graph […]
One economic variable that I track is the percentage of capital income used for consumption. It is not an exact number but an estimate in order to see trends over time. With the new revisions to GDP out today, I will update this variable. I have previously said that consumption by capital income would drop […]
by Joseph Joyce The BRICS and the Bretton Woods Twins The World Cup was not the only event of global significance to take place in Brazil this summer. The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa met in the city of Fortaleza and announced the formation of two new financial institutions. One is […]
The idea of democracy is to give the people what they want, right? Ezra Klein points us to a great study by Ray LaRaja and Brian Schnaffer examining policy preferences by political donors (5% of the population) vs. non-donors (95%). Here’s my rendition of the results: Whose preferences would you say are embodied in our current government? […]
I wrote last November that the success of Abenomics in Japan would depend on raising labor’s share of income faster than inflation. Basically real wages need to rise. I would now add that real wages need to rise faster than productivity. The key is to raise effective demand with healthier consumption demand. So we see […]
When Keynes wrote about Effective Demand in Chapter 3 of General Theory… he tied the limit of effective demand to the maximization of profits. Currently I see the economy reaching the effective demand limit by the end of 2014. Is there a sign that profits are maximizing? Here is Gina Martin Adams of Wells Fargo […]
Mark Cook is an investor who uses his own proprietary indicator to assess the stock market. He saw the crashes of 1987, 2000 and 2007. (article from WSJ Market Watch) He is seeing the stock market going into strange territory at the moment. “It’s like being in the Twilight Zone, he says. “Imagine going outside […]
The Countdown is ON! (Update 2: It’s out, links work. See you in Comments) (Update for Post Publication) If things go as scheduled the 2014 Report of the Trustees of Social Security will be released to the web at 12:15 Easter or less than two hours from the time this post published. Assuming the same […]
A a year or so back I highlighted David Beckworth’s great post on Helicopter Drops. And the world’s best econoblogger, Steve Randy Waldman, did as well. (A “fantastic post,” he said.) I’ve been pinging ever since to see a response to that post from Market Monetarist opinion-leader Scott Sumner. (AS SRW said, what we’d gotten from him […]
by New Deal democrat originally published at Bondadd blog. (Dan here) NDD takes a look at the new Russel Sage Foundation report on changes in net wealth for Americans: Two thoughts for Sunday on increasing inequality of wealth A new study by the Russell Sage Foundation on changes in wealth is yet another piece […]