Infrastructure – The Next Big Deal? #1 Reuters carries a report on an infrastrucutre concern: The worst Midwest flooding since 1993 has generated images of swamped towns, cracked roads, washed-out bridges, overwhelmed dams, failed levees, broken sewage systems, stunted crops and water-logged refugees. The losses are in the billions of dollars and still mounting, as […]
We are in real trouble. Easy credit from foreign central banks is reaching its limit. Easy credit inside the U.S. is already a fantasy. The dollar is in crisis. Debt is rapidly becoming the name of the game, at least for us. As the dollar falls, in real terms, prices and unemployment are rising. Wages […]
If you look at the data on traffic deaths it is obvious that we are doing something right in the US.As far back as the data goes traffic deaths have been falling at a -3.2% annual rate. But if your source of information was economics you would be hard pressed to know this. It has […]
The NBER committee that officially determines the dates for recessions has a few favorite, or key indicators that it gives much more weight. One of the indicators is real manufacturing and trade sales. Not many people pay much attention to it because it does not have its own press release and wall street traders do […]
Kash suggests that Greg Mankiw was not careful in his beer drinking example: The first and second men (the poorest) used to pay $0.20. Now they pay only $0.15 (a savings of $0.05, or 23%). They must then pay an additional $0.16 somewhere down the road. The third and fourth men (the next poorest) used […]
I’ve always suspected longtime reader OldVet of consorting with foreigners. Sadly, my worst fears were confirmed just now, when he sent me this e-mail: _____________________________________________________________________ This morning I got the following email request from an entrepreneurial young Indian businessman from New Delhi : “Greetings from somewhere over Azerbaijan . I am on my way to […]
As I read Brad DeLong fulfilling the plea from Jonah Goldberg: Well, we want to put up more quotes from the pages of NR, past, present and future there I had to wonder. Brad is a very good economist and yet he provided quotes about NR’s racism and love for Joseph McCarthy but nothing on […]
David Wessel of the Wall Street Journal is feeling bearish this morning: Every so often, economic forces and financial markets collide in ways that make for a tumultuous year — the stock market crash in 1987, the Asian financial crisis and bond-market paralysis in 1998, the bursting stock bubble in 2000. Suddenly, this year has […]
GDP growth in the first quarter of this year was just revised upward to a very robust 5.3%. Yet a lot of analysts are disappointed: WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The U.S. economy grew at a 5.3% annual rate in the first quarter, the Commerce Department said Thursday in its first revision of gross domestic product estimates. […]
Why does the National Review allow John Tamny to publish such utterly stupid comments: If a homeowner secures a loan that enables him or her to purchase more goods, by definition there is a lender who has foregone that same consumption. There’s no direct stimulus here, just a shift of money from one person to […]