by New Deal democrat Comprehensive April housing report: beware the inventory and price boomerang! Now that we have all of the April housing data, my comprehensive look at this long leading sector is up at Seeking Alpha. It’s pretty clear that sales and new construction have peaked in the short term. So, what happens when all […]
Do Languages Get Simpler When They Get More Complicated? Oh, a minor diversion from the usual political economy stuff that goes up here. This is triggered by an article in last week’s The Economist on the nearly dead San language, Nluu. It has only two living fully fluent speakers alive, both in their 80s. The […]
Needing a new shirt? Pair of pants? Sports jacket? Suit? Log on, get your body profiled, if you haven’t recently; chose material. Screen shows what you would look like in the item while you make changes if any. Place the order and item shows up at your door in 7 days; still untouched by human […]
“Revised 1st Quarter GDP Report Still Shows Growth at a 6.4% Rate,” Marketwatch 666, Commenter RJS and analyst The Second Estimate of our 1st Quarter GDP from the Bureau of Economic Analysis indicated that our real output of goods and services grew at a 6.4% rate in the 1st quarter, unchanged from the 6.4% growth rate reported in […]
I think it is now possible to look back on the debate on the effectiveness of non-standard monetary policy at the (near) zero lower bound. I will now “mark my beliefs to market” – J B DeLong. I think it is also a mildly worthwhile exercise, because it is relevant to the current debate about […]
April Personal Income Down a Record 13.1%, Disposable Personal Income Down a Record 14.6%, Savings Falls 54.0%, Marketwatch 666, RJS The April report on Personal Income and Outlays from the Bureau of Economic Analysis reflects the partial unwinding of the March government stimulus in just about every metric it tracks except for prices, which are said to […]
Real personal income has completely made up its recession losses, now exceeds pre-recession peak The last of the 4 monthly coincident markers for whether the economy is in recession vs. expansion was reported this morning for April. Let’s take a look. In nominal terms, personal income declined -13.1%, taking back most, not by no means […]
The Trumpification of Xi Jinping The Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC) has achieved great outcomes over the last several decades, especially after the late Deng Xiaoping took effective control of the nation from Maoist holdovers. He set a model of indirect and collective leadership in contrast with Mao Zedong who ruled nearly absolutely for nearly […]
“Americans stress over ‘unshakeable burden’ of student loan payments,” The Guardian, Michael Sainato, May 2020 The nation can alleviate one person of their debt multiple times; but, it can not do so for the younger contingent consisting of minorities and white former students who would add to the growth of the economy if freed. Much […]