Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Attractor States in the Business Cycle… Sluggishness is due to low Labor Share not low Productive Capacity

This post has been updated! I just posted about the Silly Confusion over Potential GDP. The main idea of the post is that real GDP made a transition to a new normal level after the crisis. And patterns from past business cycles show that real GDP stays close to this new level. But then two […]

Greg Mankiw: as duteous to the vices of plutocracy as badness would require

by New Deal democrat at Bonddad blog   Re-posted with author’s permission. Greg Mankiw: as duteous to the vices of plutocracy as badness would require There is a drastic moral difference between those who write garbage analysis because they are mistaken, and those who write garbage analysis that is loathesome.  Greg Mankiw embarrasses Harvard with an […]

Consumption Income Wealth and Expectations

I learned a fact from Chris Dillow who went on to conjecture that “consumers -in aggregage – have genuine foresight” I agree that “confidence” is a non-explanation for fluctuations in consumer spending. Such fluctuations can, for the most part, be explained by observable economic variables such as incomes, unemployment and credit availability, as John Muellbauer, […]

TISA

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pacts, the increased desire to ‘invert’ ownership and headquarters by ‘American’ companies, TISA (published only by Wikileaks?), points us to a world managed by what organizations? Via Alternet comes a note in TISA, a trade agreement that tries to frame itself in the private/government rhetoric, but we need to […]

Privatisation and government debt

Simon-Wren Lewis at Mainly Macro is on target with the term ‘privatization’ as a way to ‘save’ money and add ‘efficiency’.  Of course no slogan making the claim can begin with ‘it depends…’: Privatisation and government debt Possibly the worst argument for privatizing part of the public sector is a supposed ‘need’ to reduce public […]

Failure to Fix Servicing and Fallacy of “Save Banks at All Costs” Policy

The mortgage servicing abuses continue: by Yves Smith   Repeated Foreclosures on an On-Time Borrower Demonstrates Failure to Fix Servicing and Fallacy of “Save Banks at All Costs” Policy It was obvious at the time of the various mortgage “settlements” that the Administration’s policy was to make only cosmetic fixes in a badly broken servicing […]

Stall Speed for the Stock Market

The stock market has reached stall speed. What is a stall speed? “An aircraft flying at its stall speed cannot climb, and an aircraft flying below its stall speed cannot stop descending. Any attempt to do so by increasing angle of attack, without first increasing airspeed, will result in a stall.” (wikipedia) What does it […]