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

Consumption Wealth ratios and Stock Market Returns II

I finally did a bit of empirical work related to Consumption/Wealth as a leading indicator (see older post). I am reflecting on “consumers – in aggregate – have genuine foresight; this is why consumption-wealth ratios help predict equity returns.” I think I won’t restate exactly whom I am quoting. My thoughts were that the variable […]

Nassim Taleb: Two Myths About Rivalry, Scarcity, Competition, and Cooperation

I’m delighted to find that someone with the necessary statistical chops has answered a question I’ve been asking for a while: Have any of the 130+ evolution scientists who’ve savaged Wilson and Nowak’s Eusociality paper (and Wilson’s Social Conquest of Earth) gone deep into the maths of their model (laid out in their technical appendix)? I check […]

Is There a Puzzle to sluggish consumption?… No, Look to Capital Income

In a post by Shobhana Chandra and Jeanna Smialek at Bloomberg called Yellen Spending Mix lacks Ingredient of Higher Pay, there is a quote… “It doesn’t “add up,” said Neil Dutta, head of U.S. economics at Renaissance Macro Research in New York. “Consumer confidence is at a cycle high, and consumption is declining. You also […]

A Bit of History… Bernanke 2003

  This video of a speech by Ben Bernanke in 2003, is quite interesting. In the speech he laid the groundwork for what would eventually be his policy to combat the Great Recession. He talked about inflation, slack in the economy, price stability and even the possibility of taking the Fed funds rate to the […]

“Does Chief Justice John Roberts show a certain casualness about the truth?”

Each week I get an email from Slate telling me what the latest articles are there, this one caught my attention; Richard Posner on Roberts” For those of you who may not know, Richard Posner writes articles on the economy; but, he is also an 7th District Appeals Court Justice. The 7th District is the […]

NY Fed’s Bogus Estimate of Return on College and Brookings Institute Misses the Student Loan Crisis

Yves at Naked Capitalism writes “NY Fed’s Bogus Estimate of Return on College and the Neglect of the Intellectual Commons” Yesterday, the New York Fed released a new report by Jaison R. Abel and Richard Dietz, Do the Benefits of College Still Outweigh the Costs? which is getting good coverage in the mainstream media. Its […]

I keep wondering: Is anyone under the age of 40 ‘Ready for Hillary’?

Yves Smith linked this morning on her Naked Capital blog to my post from yesterday called “The Secretive Democracy Alliance’s Secret Is Out: Some of its members are elitist, racist and self-serving,” and added a comment about it: Helpful, but does not follow the logic to the obvious conclusion. Why is the Dem apparatus harping […]