Art Laffer is Not an Economist Can The Hill be more wrong? President Trump will award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to economist Arthur Laffer, the White House announced Friday. The president will honor Laffer on June 19 for his contributions to economic policy. The White House described Laffer as “one of […]
by New Deal democrat Weekly Indicators for May 27 – 31 at Seeking Alpha My Weekly Indicators post is up at Seeking Alpha. There was a touch of weakening across several timeframes. The economy is just weak enough that continuing trade and tariff tantrums could take a slowdown and do enough damage to make it a […]
Q1 corporate profits and real gross domestic income Yesterday the second estimate of Q1 GDP came out, which means that corporate profits for Q1 were finally reported. In my post earlier this week at Seeking Alpha, I wrote that corporate profits are of higher forecasting importance because of the contradiction in the signals being sent […]
Trump’s Latest Mexican Tariff Tirade Irks Senator Grassley Senator Grassley rebukes the latest idiocy from the White House: President Trump dropped a trade war bomb on Thursday when he announced his intent to put in place new and harsh tariffs on goods from Mexico until the “illegal Immigration problem is remedied.” And among the many worried, […]
No Fault Auto Insurance On May 30th, the Democratic Governor of Michigan Gretchen Whitmer, signed what was called a bipartisan effort by the Republican controlled legislature and a few of the Democratic members to solve the problems of expensive automotive insurance in Michigan. Due to redlining, other nefarious schemes, and a lack of transparency to […]
It is possible to cause a huge (short term possibly reversed) increase in carbon capture by algae by dumping iron sulfate in the ocean. On the other hand, uh, well, maybe it won’t work and you will just get a few tons of fish (not many tons of carbon containing detritus on the bottom of […]
Does anyone know why coal production is falling out of bed? It is down some 40% from its August level. But coal employment is still near its’ recent peak, which implies that productivity is horrible. I suspect the problem is exports to China. Maybe someone needs to ask Trump about this.
A Decision Theory Case to Chew On Here’s something I posted over on Andrew Gelman’s wonderful blog: I read Alive and thought it unknowingly made a very powerful point about decision theory, that you always have to balance the risks of action against the risks of inaction. The plane was stuck in snow on a slope that led […]
by New Deal democrat Resolving the contradiction between the yield curve and housing If you listen to the yield curve, it is screaming “recession!” If you listen to new home sales, they are saying “no worries!” One of them is wrong. For the last couple of weeks, I have been going back over history in […]