This is mostly a C&P as taken from Justin Frantz’s article One of the World’s Largest Steam Locomotives Is About to Make a Triumphant Return It is a fun post with a tad of economics tied to it. It was not seventy years ago and may be more like sixty years ago when I took […]
A business cycle theory of labor force participation and wage growth I’ve devoted a lot of time and thought, and typed a lot of pixels of commentary, about wage growth in the last few years. Some of it has panned out: based on past expansions,I expected YoY wage growth to bottom consistent with an unemployment […]
I’m not a lawyer. Also Republicans are worse than I imagine possible even taking into account the fact that they are worse than I imagine possible. However, I think Brett Kavanaugh defender Andrew Leipold of The U of Illinois School of Law is unfit to serve as a law professor. The issue is that Kavanaugh […]
How Much Do the NATO Members Spend on National Defense? Josh Marshall provides a nice discussion of the difference between how NATO is funded versus how much each of its members spends on national defense, which begins with: As we move toward the NATO Summit and the Putin-Trump summit, I thought it made sense to review […]
Understanding the simple strategy for the 2018 elections Pretend for a moment that you are a political strategist. Your party is the party in power. The opposition has been enraged since the moment of your standard-bearer’s election. In the special and off-year elections since, they have been showing up in unprecedented droves for offices up […]
A teaser about wages and labor force participation I was going to put up a short piece about wages this morning, but it has turned into a longer, more comprehensive piece, so in the meantime, here are some teasers to ponder. 1. There is a direct relationship between the economy generally, and child care costs […]
by Cactusman Bombing for Votes: Public opinion shifts during the Iraq war and implications for future conflicts Despite the recent summit in Singapore, which mostly made for good television and little substance, North Korea appears to be quickly ignoring any promises–whether implicit, explicit, or imagined–made to President Trump to dismantle its nuclear program. In Iran, […]
Don’t say I didn’t warn you (in particular, don’t say I didn’t warn you on September 25 2008). Naked CDS make financial arson profitable. It is also, probably, legal. It seems Blackstone made some money by threatening financial arson (arson meets grenmail). WSJ (via Drum) Blackstone offered Hovnanian a low-cost loan and persuaded the builder […]
The Value of Life and the Metaphor of Choice Perhaps no topic generates such bewilderment between economists and the general public as the monetary valuation of human life, or the value of a statistical life (VSL) to use the term preferred by professional economists. Economists insist that longevity is a commodity bought and sold on […]