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

"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?”

by run 75441 “The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens “That’s Baloney” stated Rep. Micky Hammon, R-Decatur, Alabama; the immigration bill cosponsor, told the Huntsville Times. “It’s clear the study over estimates the negative and under estimates the positive to skew the result toward an agenda,” […]

Unfounded Obsession With the Greek Minimum Wage

by Rebecca Wilder Unfounded Obsession With the Greek Minimum Wage The Greek minimum wage is apparently a point of contention between the Troika (ECB/EU/IMF) and the Greek government. The NY Times cites competitiveness gains as a rationale for the minimum wage cut: The goal of any pay cuts would be to help make Greek workers, […]

Labor Force Participation Rate

Yesterday there was a post about the participation rate that displayed a widespread misunderstanding of what the data actually shows. The labor force and the participation rate have been falling since the great recession. The following table shows that for the last three years the participation rate and the labor force have been falling when […]

First take on AG agreement on foreclosure

Naked Capitalism posts today on the AG agreement in Settlement Breakdown by State Plus Other Official Propaganda: This agreement is very significant in how it addresses the fraud that these banks committed against many homeowners across our state,” said ___.“ This agreement not only provides much needed relief to (STATE) [Ha ha, fill in the […]

Wired’s Embarrassing Whitewash of Foxconn

Yves comments on Wired’s Embarrassing Whitewash of Foxconn : But Johnson admits he’s a tech toy writer who apparently has no knowledge of manufacturing …. Yet he’s remarkably uninhibited in using his fantasies and abject ignorance as a basis for making sweeping generalizations about the Taiwanese powerhouse.…I find this little chart (hat tip Richard Smith) from […]

Blast from the past…old funding dies hard

This article caught my attention mainly because I hadn’t heard much about the court battles on terminating funding for the A-12 because I thought it was done. But the inability of DOD to submit documentation that might justify that the A-12 was not viable due to classified and secret information and specs made an impression […]

Corporate/shareholder value, energy market and global warming

Updated: Renewable Germany bailing out Nuclear France   I just read the following in an article by a Mr. Bill McKibben and thought it to be an interesting perspective on why climate change/global warming is being so vigorously denied. If we spew 565 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere, we’ll quite possibly go right past […]

No: Saving Does Not Increase the Supply of Loanable Funds

Or: It’s The Velocity, Stupid.I got quite a bit of blowback on my recent post suggesting that economists don’t understand accounting. In response I give you Exhibit A: the almost-ubiquitous notion that more saving increases the supply of “loanable funds” — hence that more saving causes or at least allows more investment. (The absolute classic […]

Santorum Surge, Part 144

Let’s ignore that three of his four wins (including two last night) have come in non-binding caucuses and take a quick look at The Size of the Santorum Surge. Over at Skippy, Our Leader posted a link to a discussion of whether “Romney’s strengths” could beat Obama. I wisecracked, without looking at the data, that […]

LES MISERABLES: SOCIAL SECURITY

by Dale Coberly LES MISERABLES: SOCIAL SECURITYJavert And Evil From a message from the National Consumer Law Center (reference [email protected]): “It’s perfectly fine for a person who failed to pay their child support to end up penniless and living in their car, and to die that way.” – High Ranking U.S. Treasury Official, in response […]