Updating the Petri dishes of democracy: population density remains a primary determinant of intensity Over the weekend I saw a map indicating that new coronavirus infections have been increasing on a relative basis in different and generally more rural parts of the country, especially in the Baltimore-Washington portion of the eastern megalopolis and the “black […]
I am reading this on Bloomberg entitled “Saudi oil rush threatens to disrupt stabilizing U.S. oil market.” These shipments are planned, Saudis are not sending this over out of the goodness of their hearts. Furthermore, the shipments themselves take roughly 21 days to get to the US. The orders were placed over 3 weeks ago. […]
I’m back to playing with data, so there will probably be more posts coming soon. (Sorry.) Meanwhile, this one was irresistible. FRED® has a “Natural Rate of Unemployment” data series. Apparently, the evil of the United States is that—except for the second half of the Clinton Administration where it was worth people’s while—Americans Just Don’t […]
This is an interesting study. This link is to the summary. There is a link there to the full study. 600 people with active disease of over 2 weeks completed a survey to find out just what people are experiencing with the illness. I find the following most interesting: ● Early testing is […]
Steve Roth, publisher of Evonomics and at Angry Bear, sends this note and thematic list: Economics Doesn’t Have to Be Amoral The complexity economist Eric Beinhocker writes “economics has painted itself as a detached amoral science, but humans are moral creatures. We must bring morality back into the center of economics in order for people to relate […]
by Ken Melvin Economy’s Role Economy: An Economy is a social entity’s aggregate activity of producing and exchanging goods and services. To date, a large body of knowledge about how economies work has been accumulated; a body of knowledge known as the science of economics. In a Well Functioning Economy, the requisite goods and services are […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for May 11 – 15 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. Noteworthy this week is that mortgage rates have fallen to new all-time lows, and mortgage applications, not coincidentally, have rebounded sharply. This is good news since housing normally leads the way in economic […]
Three virus-related thoughts for Sunday There are a few posts I have been working on, but haven’t had the energy to complete. But since I wanted to make the point, let me use this opportunity to quickly set forth a few thoughts. 1. I suspect that the virus has been “burning through the dry tinder” […]
A very interesting paper (not peer-reviewed) by a team of Israeli scholars proposes that a more manageable exit from pandemic lockdown might be achieved by implementing a scheme in which employees go in to work for four days and then return to isolation for ten days before repeating the cycle. A variation on the proposal […]
Jobless claims show new damage ongoing, but some damage repaired Now that we have more than one month of data from initial and continuing jobless claims since the coronavirus lockdowns started, we can finally begin to trace whether the economic impacts of the virus are being contained, or are continuing to spread out into […]