Compared to other cycles the drop in employment this cycle looks perfectly normal, as it is right on the average of the four pre-1990 cycles. The real question is how long employment continues to fall and there was little or nothing in the recent economic data to suggest that employment is on the verge of […]
by rdan Angry Bear for the year to date (seven months) has averaged about 85,662 visits a month or about a 38% increase in visits from last year. Congratulations Angry Bears and readers of all persuasions. If you like mostly what you read or contribute, and it surely is for varied reasons due to our […]
by rdan Suppose I paid you for every pound of pollution you generated and punished you for every pound you reduced. You would probably spend most of your time trying to figure out how to generate more pollution. And suppose that if you generated enough pollution, I had to pay you to build a new […]
by rdan I have noticed the term “open trade” being used by several notables on their blogs. What does it mean? There is a great reluctance to simply use the term trade, or trade agreement. I assume this is because a shorthand worked better for publication. How is this different from “free trade” or “fair […]
by reader ilsm Whittle a Beak: Return to Reagan Era Warfare Waste A cronie still in the acquisition business related that the DoD has gone back to using fixed price development contracts. In 1991, the Congress passed a law requiring DoD to use cost plus development contracts with its warfare welfare partners. This was required […]
It is almost impossible to figure out whether Social Security is tracking better or worse than projected using productivity or Real GDP, for one thing the data lags and moreover is subject to revision. But there is one measure that can be tracked with precision: Trust Fund cash balances which are reported to the penny […]
Hat tip to James McCarthy who notes: Still no mark to market – Steve Hsu at Information Processing via Dealbreaker Mortgage– 28 July 08 Mortgage-backed assets with face value of $30.6B were just sold by Merrill for $6.7B…but, amazingly, this 80% loss on the securities only gives a kind of upper bound on their value: […]
Hat tip to Mark Thoma link to Economistmom for this link to a WaPO column in the Human Behavior section by Shankar Vedantam. Psychologists have long been interested in what happens when people’s internal drives are replaced by external motivations. A host of experiments have shown that when threats and rewards enter the picture, they […]
by reader Laurie Tribal Economy There has been references on AngryBear to economic structures, workforce participation and economic justice among tribal/village residents in the past. Informed readers may know that Marx and Engels repeatedly cited Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Societies; another of Morgan’s publications is League of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). My mother has previously published […]
The Center for Economic Policy and Research reports that: Despite trade ministers’ hopes for a last-minute deal, World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations collapsed yet again today, and observers at the talks in Geneva say that the failure is not surprising, given the reluctance of India and other developing nations to sacrifice food security measures in […]