This post is simply a short note to let readers know that a series of posts and topical threads will be published over the next weeks by staff at the Committee on Responsible Federal Budget and contributors to Angry Bear blog and several outside authors in our network. Marc Goldwein, Policy Director for the Committee […]
Is there financial repression in the United States? Are some people repressed economically, while others have inordinate advantages? Is there a similarity between financial repression and falling labor share? Is financial repression something to be feared or criticized? What the heck is financial repression anyway? This post begins a 5-part series on financial repression with […]
by Robert Waldmann Komments on Kilgore Here are some of my usual comments on Ed Kilgore. Unlike me, he has been very interesting lately. He is clearly trying to reconcile the centrist and populist wings of the Democratic party noting that they agree on the main things (mostly that Republicans are evil nutcases). I think […]
As I argued last month, the Puget Sound area of Washington state was easily the best place, from a strictly economic point of view, for Boeing to build its new 777x jetliner. This was confirmed when, despite the rejection of its union contract offer by a 2:1 margin and opening an auction for a new […]
by Robert Waldmann Answering Brad DeLong’s questions Brad asks: There are a large number of serious and, so far, unanswered questions about the financial panic of 2007-2009 and our current macroeconomic predicament. Among them are: 1)Why is housing investment still so far depressed below any definition of normal? 2)Why has labor-force participation collapsed so severely? […]
Update from John Aziz below… I see a Brad DeLong post where he includes a post from John Aziz, which John wrote back in April 2013. The DeLong post is about a savings glut, and the Aziz post points to the rise in savings as a percentage of GDP. But John Aziz wrote… “The actual […]
by Dale Coberly OH NOES! SOCIAL SECURITY IS BROKE AGAIN AND WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE! BECAUSE… BECAUSE… BECAUSE WE’RE ALL GOING TO LIVE FOREVER A couple of public spirited citizens have taken some of their Own Time to warn us that Social Security is (taken from last January) “worse than you think.” They take […]
Paul Krugman, Dean Baker, Mark Thoma, (update: Jared Bernstein) and many others call for fiscal policy to boost employment and production. Their idea is to increase employment and labor’s power to bargain for better wages. The increased purchasing power of labor will resolve some problems with debt overhang too. There would be a snowball effect […]
Tim Duy wrote in a post titled, Inflation, Wages and Policy… “The fact that wages are rising while unemployment remains high is probably something of a puzzle to them (the Fed), and lends credence to the stories that the labor market is currently affected by severe structural issues…” The explanation of wage growth uses structural […]
Paul Krugman is developing the ideas to understand one of the root causes of the economic problems. His present line of logic leads to understanding the effective demand constraint upon output. He writes… “Profits took a hit during the financial crisis, but have soared since then, and are now 60 percent above pre-crisis levels; meanwhile […]