Ironies Of Minneapolis In 1944 the Minnesota Democratic Party united with the Farmer-Labor Party to form the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota, one of the most progressive state branches of the US Democratic Party. In 1948 its mayor of Minneapolis, Hubert H. Humphrey introduced at the national convention the resolution supporting civil rights for African-Americans whose […]
by Joseph Joyce Is There a Future for FDI?—Update The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which recently reported on foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2019, has released a new study on the impact of the pandemic on future FDI. The OECD points out notes that FDI flows before the pandemic have been on a […]
by Ken Melvin 3rd World — It didn’t happen overnight. The nightly news, when talking about the effect of the pandemic on the populace in, say, Southeast Asian, African, South American, … countries, invariably refer to the tenuous hold on life of their working poor; they don’t really have a job. Each day they rise and […]
Meanwhile, As Minneapolis Burns So now we are all focused on the recent horrific murder in Minneapolis and now the subsequent events that are happening in many parts of the nation, with Minneapolis the epicenter. This is serious, and I have an idea how it will end. This has even distracted us from the usual […]
April personal income and spending: considering the extreme circumstances, a good report April personal income and spending, reported this morning, showed the impact of both the lock downs and the stimulus that was passed by the Congress. To cut to the chase, spending in real inflation-adjusted terms declined -13% (red), while real income rose 11%(blue): […]
Death And The Pandemic Economy The relation between death and the pandemic economy is a fraught one that has become hotly debated, although with not much clear empirical evidence. I note that recently over on Econbrowser Menzie Chinn has had a series of posts on this matter in various forms. Obviously a big issue has […]
The HEROES act passed by House Democrats did not include a formula that would keep expanded unemployment insurance benefits in place until the economy has recovered. The always thoughtful Ezra Klein is very critical of this omission. His argument can be boiled down to two points: If Biden wins the presidency, Republicans will predictably try […]
Lawrence Summers discovers bargaining power Mainline macroeconomics pretends to be “value neutral,” by which practitioners mean that they assign no moral value to the supply or demand curves to the participants in the economy: they simply exist. The question of *why* participants in the economy have particular supply and demand curves is simply not even […]
Conspiracy Theories: How to Pick Out the Plausible Ones This is an age of rampant conspiratorialism. Bill Gates is behind the pandemic because he wants to shoot you full of vaccines. No wait, it’s all those 5G cell towers. Or maybe it’s bioterrorism from China. Or just a hoax perpetrated by international capital to undermine […]
I have been monitoring the close relationship between bond yields and monetary velocity ( personal income/zero maturity money) for years without coming to strong conclusion about what to make of it. In particular, it displays the long term secular rise and fall of bond yields before and after 1980.. I do not know of […]