by Mike Kimel Agency, or “o Brasil do meu amor” There was a rumor that an Olympic kayaker hit a couch while practicing in the lagoon in Rio. Perhaps it happened.  Perhaps it didn’t.  Either way, one thing is certain.  The water – in the lagoon, in Guanabara Bay, and off the famous beaches of […]

by Mike Kimel Top Marginal Tax Rates and Real Economic Growth, Part 1 This post looks at the relationship between the top marginal income tax bracket and growth in real GDP per capita (from NIPA table 7.1) in the subsequent year or years. The first graph shows the top marginal income tax rate on a […]

Donald Trump again raised the specter of election fraud Friday, saying that the only way he would lose Pennsylvania is to Hillary Clinton is if “they cheat.” The Republican nominee, speaking at a rally in Altoona, Pennsylvania, repeated his concerns about the fairness of the election. “The only way we can lose, in my opinion […]

I wrote a post about the velocity of M2 money supply. There were comments that the M2 money supply is a dying indicator. Well, let’s look… There are 3 indicators for the money supply, M1, M2 and MZM. M1 is the narrowest. MZM is the broadest. M2 is in the middle. “M1 is the money […]

Using my model of core inflation, nominal rates, profit rates, labor share & capacity utilization, here is a graph of the present situation. The estimated natural real rate for this graph is 1.7%. The vertical dashed green line shows where capacity utilization is now at 75.2%. The solid red line shows the path of the […]

Outside the factory setting [which Clinton toured today before she gave her economic-policy speech], a scattering of pro­-Trump protesters held “Hillary for Prison” signs and criticized Mrs. Clinton’s connections to Wall Street. And more than 1,000 miles away in Florida, Mr. Trump echoed that critique. “She doesn’t have the talent” to jump­start the economy, Mr. […]

by Joseph Joyce Capital Flows and Financial Activity in Commodity Exporters Emerging markets and developing economies have struggled in recent years to regain the growth rates of the last decade before the global financial crisis. The slowdown has been particularly evident in commodity-exporters that face declining prices. The World Bank’s most recent Global Economic Prospects, […]

Straight from the Mercatus Institute, libertarian Tyler Cowen notes that fund managers who donate to Democrats outperformed fund managers who donated to Republicans. The difference is small compared to the huge volatility of stock market returns, but it is not small compared to the variance of the performance of the two groups of fund managers. […]