by Rebecca Wilder Euro Area ‘Hard Data’ Catching Up with the ‘Soft Data’ – Industrial Production Euro area industrial production (ex construction) declined 0.8% in the month of April. Across the major sectors, the largest decline occurred in capital goods; however, the trend in consumer and intermediate goods is worse than that of capital goods. […]
Or: Yes, The Rich Really Are Different You’ve all probably seen the depressing reports from the newly issued 2010 edition of the Fed’s triennial Survey of Consumer Finance, in particular the 39% drop in median household net worth, ’07-’10. Here’s a picture (click for larger): The well-off have done fine. In the greatest economic downturn […]
I regularly see right wingers and republicans claiming that we should allow unlimited oil and gas drilling because it would create so many jobs. If you look at the recent data on growth in employment in oil & gas drilling it appears they may have a good argument. Over the past year employment in oil […]
Tim Johnson, Democrat of South Dakota, committee leader: “How can a bank take on ‘far too much risk’ if the point of the trades was to reduce risk in the first place? Or was the goal really to make money?” Mr. Johnson said in prepared remarks. “As the saying goes, you can’t have your cake […]
“Which Jamie Dimon will appear before the Senate Banking Committee in Washington on Wednesday?” asks Reuters BreakingViews columnist Rob Cox in a Slate piece. “The self-effacing JPMorgan boss offering apologies for his bank losing at least $2 billion on bum trades?,” he asks? “Or the combative JPMorgan leader who just a year ago publicly challenged the […]
Noahpinion points us to — and goggles in amazement at — Robert Barro’s latest op-ed in the WSJ. Why This Slow Recovery Is Like No Recovery This prompts me to republish an open letter to Professor Barro that I posted some years ago. (To which, not surprisingly, I never received a reply.) It speaks volumes […]
Damn, Krugman beat me to this yesterday. I thought I would be bringing in a fascinating piece from the fringes of the Australioblogosphere. Bronte Capital: The Macroeconomics of Chinese kleptocracy. My basic take is the same as Paul’s: I have no idea whether this John Hempton piece on China is at all right, but it’s […]
Today (emphasis mine): Vast majorities of Americans don’t trust their institutions. That’s not mostly because our institutions perform much worse than they did in 1925 and 1955, when they were widely trusted. It’s mostly because more people are cynical and like to pretend that they are better than everything else around them. Vanity has more […]
by Rebecca Wilder The Italian Economy Is Sliding Today I.Stat released the breakdown of Q1 2012 real GDP for the Italian economy. Weak external demand plus a precipitous drop in private sector spending dragged the headline real gross domestic product (GDP) 0.8% over the quarter (3.2% at an annualized rate). The highlights are the following: […]