What’s Causing High Gasoline Prices? The US Senate Republican Policy Committee has spent some time and effort investigating the cause of rising gasoline prices. Yesterday they published a policy report explaining their findings. The conclusion: rising gasoline prices are largely due to Federal regulations, such as those established by the Clean Air Act. Among their […]
Today’s Howler Somerby reads David Ignatius so you don’t have to. Here’s Mr. Ignatius explaining why, despite the information being readily available from military experts, the press failed to predict that the Iraq War and subsequent occupation would be tough: The uniformed military privately had serious questions about the Iraq mission, but these only occasionally […]
Labor’s Share, Part II Following up on my post from the other day, I’m still thinking about the recent divergence between labor productivity and the income that labor gets. In the process of thinking about this, I’ve been looking at some more data. The table below shows labor productivity and labor compensation in several countries […]
More WTO Troubles for the US The US has apparently lost another ruling in the WTO. This one was against US agricultural subsidies in the cotton industry, in a case levied by Brazil. Brazil had argued that US cotton subsidies were excessive, and thus violated WTO rules. In a preliminary ruling, the WTO agreed. There […]
All publicity is good publicity, as long as they spell your name right! I just noticed that Angry Bear is linked by Marvin Olasky’s blog. Yes, the Marvin Olasky. Journalism professor at Texas, sometimes called Bush’s “Christian Guru,” and coiner of the phrase “Compassionate Conservatism” as adopted by George Bush. A bit about his blog: […]
Military Records When there was a mini-flareup last week of Kerry’s military record, I speculated that “Kerry just might have a litttle Brer Rabbit in him, and the Republicans were kind enough to toss him right into the briar patch.” We’ll see if the issue gets anymore traction this time around in the mainstream press, […]
GDP Data This Week We have one interesting piece of economic data to look forward to later this week. The advance estimates of first quarter GDP growth will come out on Thursday. The consensus forecast seems to be for a big, big positive number, with perhaps around 5.0% annualized growth. This release takes on added […]
Decreasing Competition From today’s headlines, here’s another example of exactly why I think competition has declined in recent years – with detrimental effects on workers and consumers. Of course, the pharmaceutical industry also gets a big hand in reducing competition thanks to the Bush administration’s opposition to international competition in pharmaceutical products… Kash
Free Trade Brad DeLong: I fully expect, someday, to read that Daniel Davies has been arrested in Manhattan outside the offices of the New York Times, and was carried away for psychiatric observation shouting incomprehensible slogans like “the international economy is not a zero sum game!” Unless, of course, it happens to me first. AB
The Profit Mystery The Economic Policy Institute recently posted an interesting brief on the incredible surge in corporate profits that has accompanied the economic recovery over the past two years. (Thanks, Greg, for alerting me to this.) The data, from the BEA’s national income accounts, provides another representation of something that we’ve already seen in […]