A note on Hurricane Harvey and unemployment claims Initial jobless claims for last week were reported at 298,000 this morning, a jump of over 50,000 from recent levels. As most people probably already know, this huge jump had everything to do with Hurricane Harvey shutting down southeastern Texas, including the entire 7 million Houston metro […]
by Steve Roth (originally published at Evonomics 2016) Why Economists Don’t Know How to Think about Wealth (or Profits) Until 2006, they quite literally weren’t playing with a full (accounting) deck. Most still aren’t. By Steve Roth In the next evolution of economics taking shape around us and among us, perhaps no school has been so transformational […]
Yet Another Republican President Stabs A South Korean President In The Back [Able to get on here from my home laptop] Donald Trump has long had a record of doing things one finds not just unbelievable, but seriously outrageous. However, we may now have seen him do so in a situation involving a really dangerous […]
by Joseph Joyce Trump and International Finance International trade and immigration were flashpoints of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and in his first year he has shown that he intends to fulfill his promises to slow down the movements of goods and people. Last month negotiations over NAFTA began with Canada and Mexico, with the U.S. […]
(Dan here…lifted from Bonddadd blog; better a little late than miss it) by New Deal democrat The single most important fact this Labor Day On Labor Day, highlighting the single most important secular problem in the US economy: If there is a silver lining, it is that the hemorrhaging has stopped since the end of […]
Now may be a good time to remind people that there can be bad arguments for good causes. There may even be good arguments for bad causes. Sessions is wrong: The effect of this unilateral executive amnesty, among other things, contributed to a surge of unaccompanied minors on the southern border that yielded terrible humanitarian […]
The August jobs report smacked of late cycle deceleration As promised, here is my abbreviated and late take on this morning’s employment report. While the additions to temporary positions (a leading indicator for jobs overall), and construction, and manufacturing jobs were welcome, this report sure looked like late cycle deceleration. The YoY% growth in jobs […]
Trump Labor Policy by Noam Scheiber via NYT: In June, Labor Secretary R. Alexander Acosta announced the withdrawal of two prominent Obama administration guidances — documents that do not change the law but indicate how a department interprets it and can influence employers. The first had clarified when a worker could be classified as an […]
Via the New York Times, William E. Forbath and Brishen Rogers write an op ed for Labor Day: A New Type of Labor Law for a New Type of Worker Labor Day was born in the late 19th century, during a time of raw fear about the path of economic development. Opportunities for decent, middle-class […]
I have vigorously criticized the European Community DG EcFin approach to estimating the non accelerating wage inflation rate of unemployment (NAWRU). This is a step in their estimation of output gaps, which, in turn, are used to set allowed deficits for member countries under the Stability and Growth Pact. The calculations are critically important. Marco […]