Is the taboo against raising wages beginning to break? It’s a *really* slow news week for economic data — just producer and consumer prices tomorrow and Thursday. Even JOLTS doesn’t come out until next week. But there was one little nugget of good news this morning: the NFIB, which represents small businesses, came out with their […]
This is a somewhat late 10th anniversary of the Lehman failure post. I am not going to write much that is new, but will restate an argument I have been making for years (following John Quiggin and Miles Kimball). It is trivially easy for the US Treasury (and other treasuries) to make huge profits on […]
Scenes from the September jobs report Leaving aside wages, there was lots of sunshine in September’s jobs report, although there were a few gray if not dark clouds on the horizon. Here’s a look at each: 1. Weekly jobless claims did lead the unemployment rate Two weeks ago, I wrote that the new 40+ year lows in […]
Nobel Prizes in Economics, Awarded and Withheld Most of the commentary today on the decision to award Nobel prizes in economics to William Nordhaus and Paul Romer has focused on the recipients. I want to talk about the nonrecipient whose nonprize is perhaps the most important statement by the Riksbank, the Swedish central bank that […]
by Josepth Joyce The Continuing Dominance of the Dollar Ten years after the global financial crisis, we are still coming to an understanding of how profound a shock it was. The changes in political alignments within and across nations and the diminished public support for globalization continue. But one aspect of the financial system has […]
I try to avoid forcasting, but I confidently forecast that, in the future, I will continue to try and try to find cases on which I disagree with Paul Krugman. In The Economic Future Isn’t What It Used to Be (Wonkish) Krugman notes that forecasts of potential output of the US and the EU are […]
Weekly Indicators for October 1 – 5 at Seeking Alpha – by New Deal democrat My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Unsurprisingly, the big story this week was the jump in interest rates. As always, clicking on the link and reading the post is not only informative, but helps put a little cash […]
September jobs report: a mixed report with different implications in different timeframes HEADLINES: +134,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate declined -0.2% from 3.9% to 3.7% U6 underemployment rate rose from 7.4% to 7.5% Here are the headlines on wages and the broader measures of underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, but Want […]
The simple Fed funds + payrolls leading indicator: autumn update While we are waiting for tomorrow’s jobs report, let me update my alternative Fed funds + payrolls leading indicator for the economy, which I debuted earlier this year. This was the result of looking for an interest rate indicator that did not rely upon the […]
September auto sales were the worst (economic reporting) in a long time I don’t think I have seen as badly, or worse, outright misleading reporting in a long time as I have seen concerning September auto sales. Almost all of the stories — and especially the Doomish punditry that dominates the clickbait econoblogosphere — have […]