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 […]
Think Progress reports: Limbaugh did not recant his earlier statements about Irma, and he did not encourage his listeners in the area to evacuate. In fact, Limbaugh seemed to even double down on his earlier views. “The views expressed by the host of this program [are] documented to be almost always right 99.8 percent of […]
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 […]
The Washington Post has a story on ACT scores: New results from the nation’s most widely used college admission test highlight in detailed fashion the persistent achievement gaps between students who face disadvantages and those who don’t. Scores from the ACT show that just 9 percent of students in the class of 2017 who came […]
The Present If you thought it was over, it is not. Now that Schumer/Pelosi have removed the debt limit issue in front of Republicans with a Trump agreement, one more impediment to assaulting healthcare has been cleared away. John, I have cancer and have healthcare, McCain has come out to support a bill proposed by […]
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. […]
Noah Smith has written a column at BloombergView, “Don’t Believe What Jeff Sessions Said About Jobs,” which scolds Attorney General Jeff Sessions for “terrible economics.” That may be a bit like carping about Charles Manson’s hairstyle or critiquing David Duke’s academic integrity. But there is something far more dangerous going on with Smith’s knee-jerk invocation […]
(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 […]