Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Here is a Little Economics Lesson

Here’s a little economics lesson: supply and demand. You put the supply out there, and demand will follow. — Rick Perry, U.S. Secretary of Energy While the media is having fun at the expense of Secretary Perry’s asinine “economics lesson” it is worth pointing out that the very same publications that ridicule Perry perpetually peddle […]

Why You Should Never Use a Supply and Demand Diagram for Labor Markets

Dan here…I noticed further writing on the macro side of labor and asked Peter’s opinion, and he reminded me of this post. by Peter Dorman  (originally published at Econospeak) Why You Should Never Use a Supply and Demand Diagram for Labor Markets You would know this if you read your Cahuc, Carcillo and Zylberberg, but […]

Poverty, Crime and Causality

I was bouncing around my twitter feed and landed on this tweet which in turn took me to a paper entiteld Childhood family income, adolescent violent criminality and substance misuse: quasi-experimental total population study. The paper appeared in the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2014. Here’s the basic summary: Background Low socioeconomic status in childhood […]

The IMF’s Flexible Credit Line

by  Joseph Joyce The IMF’s Flexible Credit Line The policy conditions attached to the disbursement of an IMF loan have long been the subject of controversy. In the wake of the global financial crisis, the IMF introduced a new lending program—the Flexible Credit Line—that allowed its members to apply for a loan before a crisis […]

Happy 8th Independence Day, economic expansion!

Happy 8th Independence Day, economic expansion! In lieu of a more traditional Independence Day post, in view of the fact that the economic expansion turned 8 years old this week, I thought I would take a moment to highlight how far we have come.  Because as mediocre as some things are, we have come a […]

Robert Samuelson At The Washington Post Is Bashing Social Security Yet Again

Robert Samuelson At The Washington Post Is Bashing Social Security Yet Again Yet again. I grant that he did not do  it at length or present a lot of clearly incorrect nonsense.  But bash Social Security he did, using an old ruse to do so, combining it with Medicare to invoke a long term deficit […]

The Slogan ‘Globalization equals growth’ is Wrong

Via Naked Capitalism comes Daniel Gros, Director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels. Originally published at VoxEU. Here is the introductory summary: Trade and international financial transactions have grown massively in recent decades. This phenomenon, also called globalization, is often described as a ‘mega-trend’. Business and political leaders never tire of repeating that […]