Rdan No Sweat adds another facet to the crisis in Dubai…mobility of labor and wages. I cannot imagine what conditions are like to produce a strike in this city. If the players default in high finance, do they go to debtors’ prison like most everyone else? An estimated 700,000 Asians, mostly from India, Pakistan and […]

Robert Waldmann Among experts, there is a widespread view that people in the USA support social insurance an oppose welfare. It is a fact that they support social security old age and disability pensions and hated AFDC. It is suspected that describing social security as a pension plan with mandatory participation is part of the […]

We are now almost 24 months into the Great Recession. While many expect NBER will eventually say that The Great Recession ended several months ago, they have not yet. By contrast, the recession that began The Great Depression, per NBER, lasted 43 months. It seems only fair to compare the two, so I trust I […]

Richard Baldwin at VoxEU introduces a new book on “great trade collapse” before the WTO meeting occurring shortly. Re-posted with attribution: The Great Trade Collapse World trade experienced a sudden, severe and synchronised collapse in late 2008 – the sharpest in recorded history and deepest since WWII. VoxEU today posts a new Ebook – written […]

Have a good Thanksgiving folks. From all the Bears

Today’s release by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas of October’s Trimmed Mean Personal Consumption Expenditure gives us a chance to check this “alternative measure of core inflation.” The clearest thing is that it does what the FRB Dallas intends: generally reduces the measure of inflation: For the graphic above, any value above the line […]

by Bruce Webb News that the Republicans are pushing two bills that would establish a ‘Bi-Partisan Commission’ to ‘reform’ Social Security and Medicare are stirring up a debate which mostly had run cold. And one myth is bubbling back to the surface, the one that claims that Reagan simply used the Greenspan Commission to generate […]

By Spencer The weekly initial unemployment claims are widely reported and various charts show how they have been falling since the peak. But it is hard to compare the drop in claims this cycle compared to after other severe recessions in the standard charts showing claims over time. So to make such comparisons easier I […]