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Blog | Economic Policy Institute
Has the unemployment rate fallen “too fast” given underlying output growth over the past 18 months? Applying a simple Okun-type relationship between changes in unemployment and the difference between growth rates of actual and potential GDP (or, changes in the output gap) would indicate so. Between the fourth quarter of 2009 and fourth quarter of 2011, the output gap shrank by less than 0.8 percent per year – which historically would only have been associated with a 0.4 percentage-point decline in the unemployment rate.
Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, reading a recent issue, looked up to declare that LBO is full of “wonderful rants and some very interesting facts.” despair revised by movement • why nt to obsess over corporate personhood • U.S. income and poverty in 2010: miserable • U.S. economy picking up some steam, but not Europe • jobs of the future: many of them sucky
Left Business Observer
The Baseline Scenario
“I don’t see anything wrong with asking people to pay the expected value of their health care — a mandate to get insurance to cover the catastrophic things that society would cover in any case — to avoid this type of gaming of the system. Yes, it’s true that many healthy people will pay, remain healthy, and seem to get nothing.
[Murray claims] elites in America have become so tolerant – afflicted with such “ecumenical niceness”, as Murray calls it – that they cannot bring themselves to “preach what they practise”.
Grasping Reality with Both Hands
I wanted to wait a few days before commenting on Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s spontaneous criticism of Barack Obama for picking on Mitt Romney’s experience at Bain Capital.
TripleCrisis
What should liberal wonks make of the conservative movement’s abandonment of center-right policy innovations like the individual mandate and cap-and-trade once President Obama took them up?
Rortybomb
I wanted to elaborate on what I think is the biggest error being made by Greenwald and Taibbi — namely, the idea that Mitt Romney is a “centrist.” It’s worth noting here that the original Gush-Bore argument was made by a variety of people across the ideological spectrum, with a presumably wide variety of evaluations of the Clinton/Gore record. Not just Naderites but prominent centrists and Manhattan liberals advanced the argument that the 2000 election was a boring affair with nothing much at stake, helping lead us on the road to Iraq, Sam Alito, massive upper-class tax cuts, and many other terrible and highly consequential things that wouldn’t have happened with Al Gore in the White House.
Lawyers, Guns & Money
Corporate Greed
As someone who spent most of my adult life being a staffer for politicians in one capacity or another, I’m sympathetic to the breed, particularly those who labor in anonymity lest they interfere with the glory due to “the boss,” a.k.a. the Sun King, around which everyone must revolve. I know a lot of staffers shudder at many of the words that emerge from “the boss’s” mouth—even speechwriters, who must craft inanities dictated by others.
The Washington Monthly
Economy In Crisis | America's Economic Report - Daily
The membership of the United States in the World Trade Organization (WTO) has never, and will never, serve our country well. The undemocratic nature of the WTO ensures this. Yes, each country in the WTO gets one vote; but how well is the will of the American people reflected in the decisions of the organization?www.pensitoreview.com
Trish Ponder | May. 22, 2012interfluidity
A couple of weeks ago, I sat down and read Matt Yglesias’ The Rent Is Too Damned High and Ryan Avent’s The Gated City back to back.Equities and Basel III's Liquidity Requirements
Last night, Bloomberg reported that the Basel Committee was considering revising Basel III's new Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) to allow banks to use equities in their liquidity pools.Re-Capturing the Friedmans : BERKELEY – On my desk right now are reporter Timothy Noah’s new book The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do about It and Milton and Rose Director Friedman’s classic Free to Choose: A Personal Statement . Considering them together, my overwhelming thought is that the Friedmans would find their task of justifying and advocating small-government libertarianism much harder today than they did in 1979.
Brad DeLong: Grasping Reality with the Invisible Hand
Today I'm going to share a personal struggle with you. This is news I've largely kept to a small circle of close friends over the past few years and is difficult to talk about.