The US-Mexico Trade Deal Dies Nobody is calling it that, but the low key story on the back pages of Wednessday’s major papers report that this is what has happened, not to my surprise. September 29 (or maybe the 30th at a stretch) is the deadline for President Trump to submit to the Congress the […]
A Few Thoughts on “Sorry to Bother You” I saw this film several weeks ago and have been meaning to say a few things about it. Herewith: 1. This is an exceptionally intelligent movie by American standards. It maintains a high level of wit and observation from beginning to end, and little zingers flash by […]
Citizens United, Thoroughly Debunked I admit I haven’t paid too much attention to debates over Citizens United, since I regard the direction taken by regulation, control over who may contribute to political campaigns and how much they can put up, to be misguided. I would like to see comprehensive control over how much money can […]
Is the Ecological Salvation of the Human Species at Hand? In “De-growth vs a Green New Deal,” Robert Pollin relies on the same blurring of distinctions that Robert Solow employed 46 years earlier in his condemnation of The Limits to Growth as “bad science.” Nicholaus Georgescu-Roegen pointed out Solow’s obfuscation in the article that inspired the term […]
Mainstream Media Says Trump Triumphs Over Iran! That would be several stories in both the New York Times and the Washington Post over the last two days: Trump’s policy against Iran is a great success and it is completely reasonable and justified. This reporting and columnizing has followed three tracks. One was in a column […]
A bold forecast: there will be no autumn surge in housing this year The big issue this year in housing is whether increased mortgage rates and higher prices have merely resulted in a deceleration in the increase in new housing sales and construction, or whether housing is actually rolling over. As I’ve written several times […]
Via ElNuevoDia at LG&M, “Gamblers are now betting that Kavanaugh will not be confirmed.” The market in question, at PredictIt, seems rather straightforward. Note, though, that the contract only opened five days ago (18 September) and traded consistently in the 60-70% range through yesterday (22 Sep), closing at 61% and only reaching as low as […]
Senator Grassley tweeting: “Five times now we hv granted extension for Dr Ford to decide if she wants to proceed w her desire stated one wk ago that she wants to tell senate her story Dr Ford if u changed ur mind say so so we can move on I want to hear ur testimony. […]
“What Keynes Ignored” Ruth Sutherland wrote in The Daily Mail a couple of days ago: Here is how Keynes “ignored” those “workaholic tendencies”: Yet there is no country and no people, I think, who can look forward to the age of leisure and of abundance without a dread. For we have been trained too long to strive […]
A hypothesis for Prof. Krugman: the transmission method was FEAR In his recent column disagreeing with Ben Bernanke, Paul Krugman asks for an explanation as to how a financial panic could lead to years thereafter of a slow recovery. Specifically, Krugman says that he “really really wants to hear about the transmission mechanism.” After all, […]