by Joseph Joyce Inequalities, National and Global The publication of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century brought attention to an issue that has been slowly seeping into public discourse. President Obama’s State of the Union address made it clear that we will not need to wait until the 2016 Presidential campaign to hear proposals […]
US technology giant Apple has reported the biggest quarterly profit ever made by a public company. Apple reported a net profit of $18bn (£11.8bn) in its fiscal first quarter, which tops the $15.9bn made by ExxonMobil in the second quarter of 2012, according to Standard and Poor’s Wowww in one quarter Apple made 3/14ths of […]
Noah Smith has replied to my recent post criticizing his use of median household income to measure middle class living standards. He raises some interesting questions, but some of them still leave me scratching my head. Smith writes: I don’t understand the idea that “households have had to” compensate for lower weekly wages (also the […]
CBO Budget and Economic Outlook: 2015 to 2025 Document link for Robert’s post. Lots of numbers here, including a new Jan 2015 Baseline for Social Security Just started poking at the numbers but it seems that CBO has revised projected revenue for SocSec down going forward. Not by a lot but perhaps enough to make […]
I’m a chocoholic. Can’t eat it as much as I used to. So, this bit of news by way of C & L caught my eye. I’ll let the article speak for it’s self. As a result of a settlement with the Hershey’s Company, Let’s Buy British Imports, or L.B.B., agreed this week to stop […]
According to exit polls the leftist party Syriza clearly won the Greek elections Two exit polls show Syriza with a 12.5 percentage point lead over nearest party, New Demoracy. update a bit more: One poll suggested Syriza took 35.5% of the votes, and the other suggested it took 39.5%, well ahead of the ruling New […]
A fairly large number of economists have argued that Keynesians predicted that the fiscal cliff January 2013 and sequestration March 2013 would cause a recession. A fairly large number of Keynesian economists have denied personally making that prediction (including the oversigned). Only following a complaint in comments will I look up all the links at […]
A month late, I learn from brilliant economist Simon Wren-Lewis about the 3.5 year late revelation of the utter contempt that then European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet had for Democracy. I hand the microphone over to brilliant economist Paul DeGrauwe The ECB’s letter to the Spanish government is not the only one the ECB […]
The markets have been showing a rather particular schizophrenia over the last dozen or so years — but not, perhaps, the one you may be thinking of. This schizo-disconnect is between the goods markets and the asset markets, and their valuations of U.S. production. In short, the existing-asset markets think we’re producing and saving far […]
Nick Rowe wonders why no one talks about price controls any more. I think this is related to his discussion of the gigantic influence of Milton Friedman on new Keynesian macroeconomics. See also this. Due to the same exchange, I recall tax based incomes policy. IIRC Paul Samuelson and especially Robert Solow were quite enthusiastic […]