They’re spending it on lawyers! I’m not kidding.  Brown told a 27-year-old Fidelity Investments retirement specialist that big corporations can’t afford to hire people because they’re spending so much money on lawyers.  Which they have to do because of all those regulations.  Which is why he wants to “loosen regulations on big companies”: “So they […]

Work hard. Save your money. Spend less than you earn. That’s how you become wealthy, right? That’s not totally wrong, but if you think that’s the whole story — or even a large part of the story — you may be surprised by this graph: (Note: these are not realized capital gains, which really only matter for tax […]

by Sandwichman (at Econospeak) “Cake without Flour” — Duncan Foley on the Dilemmas of Economic Growth The following excerpt is from Duncan Foley’s outgoing Presidential Address to the Eastern Economics Association, “Dilemmas of Economic Growth,” presented March 9, 2012 (Reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Eastern Economic Journal (2012) 38, 283–295 published by Palgrave […]

by Joseph Joyce Volatility in the Emerging Markets Volatility has returned to the financial markets. Stock prices in the U.S. have fallen from their September highs, and the return on 10-year Treasury bonds briefly fell below 2%.  Financial markets in emerging markets have been particularly hard hit,. The Institute for International Finance estimates that $9 […]

Guest Post by Mark Jamison, retired Postmaster Webster, N.C. This post originally appeared on Save The Post Office Blog. This is Part 2 of three posts and following Invisible Hands: The Businessman’s Campaign to Dismantle the Post Office. Default.  It’s an ugly and dangerous word.  It gives the impression that the individual or enterprise attached […]

Two major Kentucky newspapers have endorsed Alison Lundergan Grimes for Senate over incumbent Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R). The Courier-Journal and the Lexington Herald-Leader both ran editorials Sunday in support of the Democrat, who currently serves as Kentucky’s Secretary of State. In its endorsement, the Courier-Journal’s editorial board praised Grimes’ stance on issues like the minimum wage […]

Paul Krugman writes about QE and easy money as being beneficial for the bulk of Americans. But he gives reasons that could justify using easy money all the time, even in healthy business cycles. He says… “The bottom three-quarters of the wealth distribution basically has no investment income.” This fact applies all the time in […]

David writes a short and ‘meant to encourage discussion’on retail level water use and campaigns to ‘save’ water. In short, the question/answer involves taking a look at what the whole cycle is for your watershed, which many of us are only vaguely aware. The comments that follow at Aguanomics are helpful in considering responses. by […]

Brad DeLong responds to Paul Krugman’s post on The Profits-Investment Disconnect. Why are profits high, but investment low? Brad DeLong says… “Profits are not high now because demand is high, throughput is high, and capacity is being fully used. Profits are high now because the labor share is unusually low. Firms almost surely, given the […]