Economics
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This past Sunday, on NBC's Meet The Press , Grover Norquist had a warning for the president, Democrats, the nation, and perhaps the world: If America ends up going over the "fiscal cliff" there will be a Tea Party revival that will outweigh that of the 2010 midterm elections. "Tea Party two is going to dwarf Tea Party one if Obama pushes us off the cliff." I have a question.
Grover Norquist Is Wrong About the Tea Party's Second Coming - Leslie Marshall
Downturn and Legacy of Bush Policies Drive Large Current Deficits
Federal deficits and debt have been sharply higher under President Obama, but the evidence continues to show that the Great Recession, President Bush’s tax cuts, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain most of the deficits that have occurred on Obama’s watch — based on the latest Congressional Budget Office projections as well as legislation enacted since we last issued this analysis of what lies behind current deficits and debt. Though some lawmakers and pundits continue to blame record deficits on the President’s policies in general — and his actions to boost the economy and stabilize the financial system in particular — these policies increase budget deficits only briefly; they will have no significant impact on the long-term problem of large deficits and rising debt.
‘How Much Is Enough?’ by Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky
The inspiration for “How Much Is Enough?” is — unsurprisingly, given the father’s preoccupation — an essay by Keynes. It is called “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” and was published in 1930. Since it is by Keynes, it is ingenious and brilliantly written. It is also dated and unconvincing.
‘Unclogging’ the Popular “CalculatedRisk” Employment Chart | Historinhas
Below the original version: The compact (‘unclogged’) version simplifies by averaging the 1953 through 1980 recessions. The ones that are singled out have ‘special features’.
Why Is Job Growth Tepid?
The unemployment rate has been 8.2 percent for three months now, creating concern that we are in a high-unemployment equilibrium. The unemployment rate is not a very good measure of the employment situation, because it excludes discouraged workers—persons who are not looking for a job. The number of discouraged workers actually dropped slightly in June. On the other hand, the number of underemployed workers rose slightly, causing the total of un- and underemployed to rise from 14.8 to 14.9 percent. Yet there has been a net increase, though a small one, in the number of new hires and in average wages.
The LIBOR scandal: The rotten heart of finance
THE most memorable incidents in earth-changing events are sometimes the most banal. In the rapidly spreading scandal of LIBOR (the London inter-bank offered rate) it is the very everydayness with which bank traders set about manipulating the most important figure in finance. They joked, or offered small favours. “Coffees will be coming your way,” promised one trader in exchange for a fiddled number. “Dude. I owe you big time!Richard Posner gave an interview to NPR this week in which he blasts current-day conservatives and says today's "goofy" Republican Party has made him less conservative. Over the last 10 years, he said, "There's been a real deterioration in conservative thinking. And that has to lead people to re-examine and modify their thinking."
Who Needs Posner When You Have Mises and Hayek?
Logging Oil and gas extraction Mining (not oil and gas) Support activities for mining Mining
BLS Jobs By Industry Treemap
The Rise of Innovative State Capitalism
Over the past five years, as much of the developed world has staggered through crisis, a new type of capitalism has emerged as a challenger to laissez-faire economics. Across much of the developing world, state capitalism—in which the state either owns companies or plays a major role in supporting or directing them—is replacing the free market. By 2015 state-owned wealth funds will control some $12 trillion in assets, far outpacing private investors.
It was late at night in October of last year when the strange email arrived. In fact, I only read it by accident and did not delete it by some miracle of fate. Before the Euro Crisis erupted in 2009, I was just another economics professor, minding my own little theoretical endeavours, writing obscure papers and esoteric books that only a few hundred nutcases around the world (like myself) would ever read, terribly satisfied in my very own academic cocoon. Back then, I would never even imagine not answering an incoming email. And then, all of a sudden, as if by the wave of some vengeful wizard’s wand, the tranquility was shattered and I found myself in the midst of an acrimonious Europe-wide debate watched over by millions.
IT ALL BEGAN WITH A STRANGE EMAIL | Valve
The Low-Down: Into the Future: Social Media Info Elevates Big Data Predictions
Your tweets do have meaning. To your family and friends, of course and maybe to some colleagues. But we are referring to a bigger meaning for your online musings, in the bundled and aggregated sense. Sophisticated investors and some government agencies are increasingly analyzing social media data to enhance their own statistical predictive capabilities. They are searching for patterns, trends and anomalies that may provide knowledge about the direction of various markets; for securities, for products, for services, for political outcomes and any other knowledge from which advantage can be derived.Ed Dolan's Econ Blog » Inflation is Quiet, So Why are People Still Feeling its Pain?
Author: Ed Dolan · · Share This Print This week’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows no change in the seasonally adjusted U.S. consumer price index for April. Real average hourly earnings were also unchanged. On the face of it, those numbers should take inflation off the list of things people have to worry about, but they don’t. Instead, every time I post numbers that show inflation is low, I get comments like these:1. This chart shows who is to blame for most of the $14.3 trillion national debt and, despite GOP bleating to the contrary, it isn’t Obama. 2. This chart shows the number of unemployment claims have been going down as a result of Obama’s stimulus package. 3.
The Economy By the Numbers | Fishink
Money/Feynman,_Rothbard,_and_the_Science_of_Economics - Brain Food
The following is a highly edited version of a comment thread found on the blog Gene Expression . The thread discusses the role of empricism verus deduction in the social sciences. The star commenter PhysicistDave actually studied under Feynman, which gives him some nice cachet.Oftentimes you’ll read an article in the middle of a market day about how “the market is responding” to the jobs report, or the manufacturing index, or sentiment reports. That kind of makes sense – it is shorthand for the fact that the people betting on the market are, as a group, reacting and changing their bets based on new news. If the expectation was for 200,000 jobs to be added but only 120,000 jobs were added, you’d expect disappointment and a drop in the S&P index. Even so, this language is pretty confusing, since it’s certainly not true that everyone who invests in the market is doing this – most people with money in the market don’t do anything at all on a given day. Okay then, let’s interpret it as meaning something kind of reasonable like, “of those people who respond to this news by changing their bets, a majority of them are betting in one way which is moving the market.”