Pro Publica points us to the expendable temp worker trend and with data. Via Truth out comes more: A groundbreaking 2010 study of Washington state’s workers’ comp claims found that temp workers in construction and manufacturing had twice the claims rate of regular workers doing the same type of work. If your injuries were caused […]
Senator Elizabeth Warren introduces bill to stop credit checks in job application process “A bad credit rating is far more often the result of unexpected medical costs, unemployment, economic downturns, or other bad breaks than it is a reflection on an individual’s character or abilities,” Senator Warren said. “Families have not fully recovered from the […]
Trans Pacific Partnership is Not Especially Important Paul Krugman argues that the Trans Pacific Partnership is no big deal: I’ve been getting a fair bit of correspondence wondering why I haven’t written about the negotiations for a Trans Pacific Partnership… The answer is that I’ve been having a hard time figuring out why this deal […]
Robert Solow wrote an article about Greenspan, his successes and his mistakes, Alan Greenspan Is Still Trying to Justify His Bad Decisions; What the maestro doesn’t understand. Even though I agree with what Solow said about Greenspan’s early years, I want to defend Greenspan during the years after the 2001 recession. There was something not […]
By Dale Coberly HOW MUCH INTEREST DOES SOCIAL SECURITY PAY? A reader asked what interest does Social Security pay on your “investment”? I think it is important to realize that this is not the important question about Social Security. Social Security is an insurance program and it doesn’t make any more sense to talk about […]
I have been waiting for the Fed to reverse its loose monetary policy. I am in total favor of it. A move to $75 billion per month is a well balanced decision. They waited too long and they are way behind the curve but tapering has finally started. Good to see it.
An article came out in the WSJ web site called Lenders Look to Fed Tapering to Lift Business Borrowing. One would think that tapering would discourage borrowing. Yet, we are in a situation where long-term low interest rates suppress borrowing. Here is the key line from the article referring to tapering… “Such a move would […]
The post is too good to excerpt so just go read it. To edit ruthlessly 1. The business cycle is not symmetric. [skip] 2. As much as the NBER methodology emphasizes the notion of recessions (which, by the way, is asymmetric in nature), most academic research is produced around models where small and frequent shocks […]
From the Economic Populist: The Latest Never Ending Adventures in Corporatism Via the TPP – Wikileaks has published more secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement documents, revealing more and more how the United States represents large corporations and not the citizens of the nation. The Huffington Post published a large front page story is on the Trans-Pacific […]
The future of monetary policy is troubling. I present a video to explain. (Part 4 of a series on the journey of the Fed rate from 1978 to the present.) Since the 1960’s, the Fed rate has consistently reacted to the natural level of real GDP (in terms of labor and capital utilization). Effective demand […]