A New Norm: Senators Bernie Sanders and Laphonza Butler presented an intriguing idea: making a shorter work week a national norm. The bill they introduced proposes changing the standard workweek with no loss in pay for certain groups of employees, including many hourly workers, from 40 to 32 hours, at which point overtime pay would kick in. […]

Wrong answers only: “saving” Originally Published at Wealth Economics In my last post, I tried to say precisely what the words “wealth” and “assets” mean as they’re used in this blog. This post tackles the question of wealth accumulation. Where does wealth come from? What are the mechanisms that create assets? Households and the accounting-ownership pyramid […]

New Deal democrats Weekly Indicators for March 18 – 22 at Seeking Alpha  – by New Deal democrat My “Weekly Indicators” post is up at Seeking Alpha. I look at the high frequency weekly indicators because while they can be very noisy, they provide a good nowcast of the economy, and will telegraph the maintenance or change in […]

 – by New Deal democrat There’s no big economic news today, but yesterday existing home sales were released. While they have historically constituted up to 90% of the entire market, they have much less economic impact than new home sales, which involve all sorts of construction activity, followed by landscaping, furnishings, and other sales. Since […]

Hal Singer at Lever News wrote a commentary explaining how banks (mostly) are upset with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau capping credit card late fees at $8. One would think this covers every bank. It does not and only covers banks with more than 1 million card holders. Any bank or organization with less customers […]

 – by New Deal democrat Initial and continuing claims once again continued their recent good streak.  Bonddad Blog Initial claims declined -2,000 to 210,000, while the four-week moving average rose 2,500 to 211,250. Continuing claims, with the typical one-week delay, increased 4,000 to 1.807 million: While these aren’t the 50+ year lows we saw 18 […]

Interest Rate increases to fight perceived inflation or not fight perceived inflation? Big believer in the cause of much of the inflation being deliberate supply chain planning to increase prices. Have not seen a deliberate price increase yet which will fix a supply chain. Poor or deliberate planning creating issues, a lack of knowledge on […]

Bonddad Blog  – by New Deal democrat No economic news today, so let me take a look at the supposed killer recent GOP meme that they claim is completely unanswerable: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” This is based primarily on consumer sentiment reading as well as polling that has consistently […]

AB: I was searching for a clear, brief, and understandable explanation of how the pharma industry works in delivering pharmaceuticals to patients. This article is one of the better ones out there and has a good and reasonable explanation on how the system works with prices, rebates, etc. A quick email to Antonio and I […]

The wealth of people and the wealth of nations Originally Published at Wealth Economics If you read this blog much, you’ll find many careful definitions of terms — something that the economics profession is terrible at. A blog called Wealth Economics really has to start at the top, with wealth. So here it is. “The only real, true wealth is…” You hear that […]