Part of an e-mail from Beverly Mann on additional expansion of corporate personhood concept at the Supreme Court: I agree that, as the article at Raw Story says, the decision is a striking contrast to the court’s ruling in Citizens United, which upended decades of campaign finance regulation, allowing corporations to spend unlimited amounts on […]
by Beverly Mann Does the Tea Party Dislike Goodwin Liu? Politico had an article last week called “Will Senate ever vote on Liu?” Liu is Goodwin Liu, a prominent liberal Constitutional Law professor at the UC, Berkeley. His official profile at the U. is here. Obama nominated him in 2009 to the Court of Appeals […]
Barry Ritholz shines a light on an alternative to the current meme on public sector unions: In a Labor Day address in 1980, Ronald Reagan said: “These are the values inspiring those brave workers in Poland … They remind us that where free unions and collective bargaining are forbidden, freedom is lost.” Reagan as above, […]
by Mike Kimel Cross posted at the Presimetrics blog I really don’t understand this post by Tyler Cowen. He begins by noting: The median earnings of full-time Canadian workers increased by just $53 annually — that’s right, $53 annually — between 1980 and 2005. He then links to two documents, one of which says this: […]
Earlier this week I argued that the ECB’s inflation target of just below 2% is too simplistic, especially during periods of supply-side price shocks: energy, food, VAT hikes. Here’s a menu of reactions to the ECB’s announced rate hike (Trichet used the phrase ‘strong vigilance’, which historically is a leading indicator of a rate hike […]
Felix Salmon writes on the question of appropriate pension plans for state systems (emphasis on teacher retirement systems) in Reuters…however, the comment section offers a superb range of thoughts by non-experts on the matter of state pensions as well. 1. Is a 7-8% return reasonable to expect (smoothed over time) in the future?2. If a […]
Calculated Risk revisits the employment to poulation ratios: …What happens to the participation rate is an important question. If the Civilian noninstitutional population (over 16 years old) grows by about 2 million per year – and the participation rate stays flat – the economy will need to add about 100 thousand jobs per month to […]
Mark Thoma links us to Rewriting the Macroeconomists’ Playbook in the Wake of the Crisis by Oliver Blanchard of the IMF. In comments are names we all recognize.
Yves Smith on the Harry Shearer show concerning the Mortgage Mess is being re-aired this Sunday (see link for times). The transcript for the show is at the link.