Interesting there is not a peep on this in the US and literally hundreds of thousands of women gathered in the streets of the Swiss cities. 40,000 in front of parliament in Bern and the same was repeated in the cities of Lausanne, Geneva, and other places. It is said the turnout is greater in […]
May real retail sales positive, but industrial production remains in a shallow recession Retail sales are one of my favorite indicators, because in real terms they can tell us so much about the present, near term forecast, and longer term forecast for the economy. This morning retail sales for May were reported up +0.5%, and […]
Empire State Manufacturing: OUCH! I’m on vacation this week, so fair warning that there is probably going to be light posting! The only economic news of note today was the Empire State Manufacturing Index. Only one district, only one survey, in a noisy series, but just the same, the overall index fell to -8.6 and […]
I’ve been on the beat of income inequality since I started blogging here. My theory: We changed the way we make money from one of making it from producing (polishing rocks into tools) to one of making money from money. When you can make money from moving money, you don’t need to compete. Just buy […]
Initial jobless claims for week ending June 10 – no concern yet I have started to monitor initial jobless claims to see if there are any signs of stress. My two thresholds are: 1. If the four week average on claims is more than 10% above its expansion low. 2. If the YoY% change in […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for June 10 – 14 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. The divergence between the near term vs. longer term forecast is increasing, and the risk that the forecast is too optimistic is asymmetrical, because for the economy, Trump’s chaotic tariff behavior cannot improve […]
Learning The Origin Of “Duality” Yesterday I learned that the person who first used the term “duality” in connection with linear programming, indeed with anything in economics, was John von Neumann in a private conversation with George Dantzig in 1947, the “father of linear programming.” That was the year Dantzig published his paper showing the […]
Robert J. Samuelson Goes Whole Hog Against Dems On Social Programs I want to follow Dean Baker in dumping on the Robert J. Samuelson Monday, 9/11/19 WaPo column on “The Democrats’ fairy-tale campaigns.” He may be right that lots of proposals have been put forward with no clear accounting of how much all of them […]
Kevin Drum wrote a typically brilliant post on absurdly high estimates of the growth of the number of health care administrators. I was very interested in one little passage. My comment. Dear Kevin You used to work for a tech company and IIRC in public relations. Now your day job is as a blogger-journalist. Don’t […]