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

The Perfect Negative Indicator Weighs In

Alan Greenspan: The U.S. Federal Reserve has done all it can do to reduce unemployment and needs to worry more about the risk of inflation from the stimulus it poured into the economy, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said on Sunday. But didn’t we just Get All That Money Back? [link added] Greenspan’s reason unemployment […]

Inflation Detour II: Crisis and Recovery across Great "Fluctuations"

We are now almost 24 months into the Great Recession. While many expect NBER will eventually say that The Great Recession ended several months ago, they have not yet. By contrast, the recession that began The Great Depression, per NBER, lasted 43 months. It seems only fair to compare the two, so I trust I […]

unemployment

Rdan After having received e-mails regarding Mark Thoma’s post on types of unemployment about who was included and excluded from the per centages, I thought a note on the relevance of the employment to population ratio to be worth repeating from comments on that post. Lifted from comments by run 75441 regarding “unemployment”here: …[D]id everyone […]

The jobs of tomorrow…?

Rdan For the sake of argument, jobs in our future over the next few years or so appear to be in the health care industry and education. Jobs needing less education than a BA are among the fastest growing. Where are tomorrow’s jobs going to come from? The question is more urgent than ever, with […]

Employment Policy

Robert Waldmann Larry Summers, who is very very good at provoking debate, said “It may be desirable to have a given amount of work shared among more people. But that’s not as desirable as expanding the total amount of work.” Paul Krugman responds here True. But we are not, in fact, expanding the total amount […]

Economic time/space phenomenon: Health care/Unemployment

by divorced one like Bush While your reading this, think about the physics concept of two things occupying the same time and space. Think about the similar idea that light is both a wave and a particle. Think about the message we have been told that many very bright people (like physicist) went to Wall […]

Technology and unemployment

rdan Sandwichman, the go to guy on labor issues and author of the series Chapman, Labor, and Unemployment at Econospeak suggests an alternative to the myth of supremacy of capital, which is after all an idea that reminds me of King Midas in our little child version, but in the adult world has several versions […]

For example, average workers ruin the economy?

rdan The Sacremento Bee has forwarded this story (h/t reader Denis) The unionized government work force has roughly 200,000 or so employees represented by 12 labor organizations. It’s a vast, diverse group ranging from custodians to doctors, clerks to engineers. And don’t forget non-union managers. All get different contract deals with varying terms. In a […]

Michelle Malkin and Larry Katz

Robert Waldmann is very very late with this one. Appears that long long ago (in blogtime) Michelle Malkin said that Larry Katz once wrote that unemployment insurance causes unemployment. I know Larry Katz, Larry Katz was my PhD co-supervisor, Larry Katz is a friend of mine and Ms Malkin, you’re no Larry Katz. Malkin was […]