by Joseph Joyce The IMF and Sovereign Debt The continuing inability of the Eurozone economies to break out of their current impasse means that any optimistic projections of declining debt to GDP ratios are unlikely to be achieved. As long as European governments continue to raise funds in the financial markets on favorable […]
Any one knowledgeable?…leave a comment on winners and losers. Deal book today describes rather ho hum changes in capital requirements for banks with a positive spin: FED’S DIET PLAN FOR BANKS The Federal Reserve said on Monday that it planned to increase the pressure on large financial firms to slim down, DealBook’s Peter Eavis writes. […]
It is commonly known that the CBO projects potential output, but they also have 2 measures for the natural rate of unemployment… a Short-term & a Long-term rate. (link) The description at FRED economic data says… “The natural rate of unemployment (NAIRU) is the rate of unemployment arising from all sources except fluctuations in aggregate […]
Post updated below. —- Forty-six Senate Democrats have concluded that the First Amendment is an impediment to re-election that a little tinkering can cure. They are proposing a constitutional amendment that would give Congress and state legislatures the authority to regulate the degree to which citizens can devote their resources to advocating the election or […]
If you equate wealth and prosperity (not a crazy equation), then one of the best measures of a country’s prosperity is median household net worth. It arguably says a lot more about prosperity than various income measures. It tells you how the typical household (50% have more, 50% have less) is doing. If lots of […]
In the Open Thread, I pointed to the The Millennial Disruption Index and Millennials as a cohort which will be bigger then Baby-Boomers and are also the cohort which has suffered the most since 2001 when jobs started to disappear and wages crashed. The families at 35 years of age are struggling the most with […]
Via Naked Capitalism: Ballooning Finance: How Financial Innovation Produces Overgrowth and Busts Yves here. It’s a welcome surprise to see economists devise a model that delivers generally sensible results. Here, three economists looked at how financial innovation leads to an bloated financial sector as well as greatly increasing the risk of meltdown. One quibble is […]
On September 4, Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval announced that electric car-maker Tesla had chosen Nevada for the location of its much sought-after Gigafactory. Contrary to its claim that it wanted $500 million, Tesla in fact wanted speed plus the highest bidder. As I analyzed last month, a $500 million subsidy would have been relatively low […]