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

Comment on Del Negro, Giannoni & Schorfheide (2014)

I would like to try to critique Del Negro, Giannoni & Schorfheide (2014) “Inflation in the Great Recession and New Keynesian Models” h/t Brad DeLong. Before the jump I have to say 3 things 1) I have just skimmed the paper. I didn’t work through the equations. 2) I am very hostile to the whole […]

Stopping Job Piracy in Dayton, Denver,… and maybe even Kansas City

As I have reported before, job piracy is a big problem in metropolitan areas like New York City and Kansas City. Giving subsidies to relocate existing facilities is a net loss for the country and for the region as well. The flip side is that the existence of job piracy makes it possible for companies […]

Fixing the Border Crisis and Social Security in One Go

Stay with me here. Because I am almost serious about this proposal. Or at least it highlights the contradictions (while not Heightening the Contradictions). The Border Crisis: tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors crossing the U.S. border. Social Security ‘Crisis’: per ‘Reformers’ one that is driven by pure demography – too few future workers to […]

SOCIAL SECURITY: CBO TELLS IT LIKE IT IS . . . MOSTLY

by Dale Coberly For some time now the Social Security Trustees have been reporting in the “media” using scare tactics like this: “Social Security Going Broke Sooner Than We Thought! Faces [fill in the blank] Trillion Dollar Deficit!” And I have tried to explain that what those numbers mean is that we need to raise […]

Corporate Illogic

Yves smith writes: You must go, now, and read a critically important piece questioning the logic of sending American manufacturing jobs offshore. It’s titled Losing Sparta (hat tip Dikaios Logos) by Ester Kaplan in VQR. We have written regularly about how we have been repeatedly told by managers and executives that the case for offshoring […]

Conceptualizing Effective Demand with Productive Capacity

“… the fundamental law of capitalism must be: If workers have more money, businesses have more customers.” Nick Hanauer Keynes wrote that insufficient effective demand could “bring the increase of employment to a standstill before a level of full employment has been reached”. We may have this problem. So… What is effective demand? I base […]

Is Euphoria a moral hazard?

Lance Roberts has a piece called Not Seeing Signs of Market Exuberance? Look Closer. He talks about the psychology of gamblers to expect winning even when the news is bad. He makes the connection to the stock market that traders keep pushing the market higher in spite of less-than-good news. He then makes the connection […]