Part of the reason employment and hours worked, in particular, have been so weak in early 2013 is the rapid growth of part-time employment. Part time employment is volatile and subject to many influences.  From December to June part time employment rose 589,000.  That is a 2.2% — almost 5% annualized – growth rate. Part […]

The notorious GSE bailout will probably cause the US Federal debt to be considerably lower than it would have been without the bailout. It could cause the US Federal debt to be much lower than it would have been, but that won’t be allowed to happen. Fannie and Freddie are now profitable. They are likely […]

Detroit Said to Reduce Swaps Debt by 25% in Deal With Banks . The swaps were a “bet” on the direction of interest rates. With the decline of variable interest rates, Detroit found itself owing to the banks. With the decreased credit rating to B2, the same as AIG, Detroit found itself at the mercy […]

Let me start by saying that I do not support the loose monetary policy of Quantitative Easing by the Federal Reserve. Supporters of QE say that it is required because there is so much slack in the economy. They say that we are far below the CBO projection of potential real GDP. Thus, the monetary […]

This post is a follow-up to the article by Felix Santana Garcia, The People Lie Helpless. Here are some photos of areas where the poor live in the Dominican Republic. Granted the poverty there is a result of many years of poor economic guidance in terms of marginal social benefits and marginal social costs. Their […]

I worked with Dwaine Van Vuuren of Recession Alert a few months ago on using the effective demand limit to detect recessions. He said the effective demand limit gave the best detection of a recession he had ever seen. He said he had seen hundreds. I want to show you one graph he came up […]

by Linda Beale Ways and Means–still distracting with false scandals GOP representatives Camp and Boustany are continuing to beat the dead horse of an IRS “scandal” connected with the way the IRS has attempted to efficiently filter new applications for 501(c)(4) status to provide extra scrutiny to the most likely groups to be engaged in […]

Menzie Chinn over at Econbrowser posted on low inflation today. His argument is that there is still lots of slack from real GDP being way below potential real GDP and from high unemployment. The idea is that abundant slack depresses prices. Inflation is generated as slack capacity is utilized. It’s the normal result of labor market […]

There has been a bit of breast-beating among the blogsphere about how CNN has become shite. A few weeks ago, it was All Zimmerman, even as trains crashed and wars broke out. (See here and here, for instance.) I’m just not convinced it has changed that much. As the Most Profound Philosopher of Our Generation […]

   Although the July employment report was weaker than expected, it was still in line with recent experiences. The household survey reported employment gains of 204,000 while the payroll report showed a gain of 162,000 jobs. Average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls edged down by 2 cents to $23.98, following a […]