Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Oh hail the Great Cactus

Looking for some back articles and wanting to try out posting with our new setup I found this one by Mike Kimel (formally known as Cactus) from July, 2010.   It is always fun to look back.* He presents his data and argument regarding where we’re going and concludes: This time, I’m not as comfortable; given where and how […]

Why Economists (On Average) are Terrible Forecasters

by Mike Kimel Why Economists (On Average) are Terrible Forecasters My colleague, Rebecca Wilder, had a post at her site entitled Economists are terrible forecasters – why trust them anyway?. The reason why economists as a general rule are lousy forecasters is obvious: there are no penalties to being wildly wrong. Prominent examples abound. Dow […]

Presidents, Tax Burdens, and the Subsequent Economic Growth

by Mike Kimel Presidents, Tax Burdens, and the Subsequent Economic Growth Over the years, I’ve posted variations of the graph below a few times: Figure 1 The graph shows the change in the tax burden (i.e., current federal receipts / GDP) from the year before an administration took office to its second year in office […]

Employment report follow up

By Spencer, Yesterday in describing the employment report I said: Moreover, the manufacturing work week rose from 39.5 to 39.8 hours and overtime hours were 2.9 hours versus 2.8 in the second quarter. Much of this was auto and confirms the other reports that at least auto output is rebounding. I was criticized and accused […]

employment report

By Spencer, The employment report was very encouraging. Most importantly, aggregate hours worked were unchanged at 91.1 as compared to 104.1, 101.7 and 99.7 over the last three quarters. An unchanged reading is a massive improvement from the 8% to 9% rate of decline over the past three quarters. With positive productivity this impies that […]