June jobs report: great headline, but once again where are the wages?!? HEADLINES: +222,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate rose +0.1% from 4.3% to 4.4% U6 underemployment rate rose +0.2% from 8.4% to 8.6% Here are the headlines on wages and the chronic heightened underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor Force, but Want […]
Reality begins to sink in for GOPer economic confidence While we are waiting for tomorrow’s employment report, here’s a little something to chew on. In the immediate aftermath of the Presidential election — as in, by the end of that week — Gallup’s measure of economic confidence soared, from its 2016 average of roughly -10 […]
Republicans help pass Illinois budget over Rauner’s veto For the second time in as many months, legislative Republicans have turned on their Republican governor for his refusal to back tax increases to help balance the budget. Last month, supermajority Kansas Republicans revolted against Sam Brownback’s six-year tax-cutting experiment, which brought the state persistent budget problems […]
Dan here…I noticed further writing on the macro side of labor and asked Peter’s opinion, and he reminded me of this post. by Peter Dorman (originally published at Econospeak) Why You Should Never Use a Supply and Demand Diagram for Labor Markets You would know this if you read your Cahuc, Carcillo and Zylberberg, but […]
by Joseph Joyce The IMF’s Flexible Credit Line The policy conditions attached to the disbursement of an IMF loan have long been the subject of controversy. In the wake of the global financial crisis, the IMF introduced a new lending program—the Flexible Credit Line—that allowed its members to apply for a loan before a crisis […]
Happy 8th Independence Day, economic expansion! In lieu of a more traditional Independence Day post, in view of the fact that the economic expansion turned 8 years old this week, I thought I would take a moment to highlight how far we have come. Because as mediocre as some things are, we have come a […]
Robert Samuelson At The Washington Post Is Bashing Social Security Yet Again Yet again. I grant that he did not do it at length or present a lot of clearly incorrect nonsense. But bash Social Security he did, using an old ruse to do so, combining it with Medicare to invoke a long term deficit […]
Via Naked Capitalism comes Daniel Gros, Director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels. Originally published at VoxEU. Here is the introductory summary: Trade and international financial transactions have grown massively in recent decades. This phenomenon, also called globalization, is often described as a ‘mega-trend’. Business and political leaders never tire of repeating that […]
Comments on Profit and Capital Yeah, I know, Marx wrote three volumes on this, and in 2014 Piketty published in English a more than 700 page book on it that ended up on the bestseller list, although neither of these resolved the long-running debates about the nature of profit or of capital, which continue to […]
Muhammed Bin Nayef Bin Abdulaziz Al Sa’ud Confined To His Palace In Jidda, according to the New York Times today. So the story about the now deposed 57-year old former Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and former Minister of the Interior, Muhammed bin Nayef (MbN), putting out a video supporting his own removal appears to […]