Austerity by governments is a policy to reduce budget deficits by cutting spending and/or raising taxes. Basically governments withhold money from the economy. The result is that aggregate demand is reduced. Yet, there is another form of austerity where businesses lower pay to labor. In effect, businesses withhold money from the economy by reducing pay […]

Laurence Ball wrote an article called The Great Recession’s Long-term Damage. He writes about how potential output has been reduced in many countries after the recession… “Through what mechanisms do recessions reduce potential output? This question is addressed in a number of recent papers (see Ball 2014). While the results vary, it appears that recessions […]

Paul Krugman has two sentences on the money in this article on Kansas, ALEC, and failed economics: The real lesson from Kansas is the enduring power of bad ideas, as long as those ideas serve the interests of the right people. … But the effect won’t last long, because faith in tax-cut magic isn’t about […]

Here are my confused thoughts about the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Harris v. Quinn decisions. Unfortunately, I am Waldmann not Mann and don’t know anything about the law. I will pretend that there is some logic behind the decisions. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby the majority found that Hobby Lobby has religious freedom — […]

From Naked Capitalism: Catch Us on Harry Shearer’s Le Show Today Posted on June 29, 2014 by Yves Smith Harry Shearer and I about private equity and the Wikileaks TISA bombshell starting at 1 PM on Sunday. Stations which stream Le Show all day Sunday are listed at publicradiofan.com. Hope you can tune in!

The Absurd Dr. “Chaps” Gordon Klingenschmitt is the Republican nominee for State Rep in Colorado Springs HD15. What qualifies him as a candidate in the Colorado State House? “‘Chaps’ as they call him, has a long history as a disgraced former Navy Chaplain who brags about having successfully performed an exorcism on a lesbian soldier […]

I finally did a bit of empirical work related to Consumption/Wealth as a leading indicator (see older post). I am reflecting on “consumers – in aggregate – have genuine foresight; this is why consumption-wealth ratios help predict equity returns.” I think I won’t restate exactly whom I am quoting. My thoughts were that the variable […]

I’m delighted to find that someone with the necessary statistical chops has answered a question I’ve been asking for a while: Have any of the 130+ evolution scientists who’ve savaged Wilson and Nowak’s Eusociality paper (and Wilson’s Social Conquest of Earth) gone deep into the maths of their model (laid out in their technical appendix)? I check […]