I am going to start with an orthodox monetarist approach, make one trivial semantic change, and see how far I can get in deriving Neo-Chartalist results. The semantic change is to change what I mean by "fiscal policy". It's an unconventional definition of fiscal policy, from a monetarist [...]
On an average day, two pedestrians are killed by motor vehicles in the UK.
Only two pedestrian per year are killed by bicycles, almost always on the road.
On pavements and verges, motor vehicles kill around [...]
As a result of the statistical "growth" in the GDP, the St. Louis Fed can now mark a little white space on its graphs, but it looks a bit silly here:
[...]Apparently, forces of nature and supernature do not like the collider:
“The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, just cannot catch a break. First, a coolant leak destroyed some of the magnets that guide the energy beam. Then LHC officials postponed the restart of the machine to add [...]
We took a trip to the workshop where the Mises Busts are made and picked up some more to replenish our stock!
[...]On an average day, two pedestrians are killed by motor vehicles in the UK.
Only two pedestrian per year are killed by bicycles, almost always on the road.
On pavements and verges, motor vehicles kill around [...]
This has been a helluva week of travel — NY to Dallas to Austin to Detroit. This post is set to launch after I takeoff for San Francisco. I will return home early next week.
My mind is brimming with ideas — About asset management, travel, investing, politics, speaking engagements, food. [...]
The best of the rest of the economics web
TODAY'S recommended economics writing:• On the price elasticity of American citizenship. (Felix Salmon) • Price comparison shopping online probably won't lead to "frictionless commerce". (NBER, via Mark Thoma) • Tyler Cowen tells stories about storytelling, at TED. (TED) • Manufacturing [...]
This evening at 7pm ET:Consumer Credit outstanding fell $14.8b in Sept seasonally adjusted, almost $5b more than expected and marks the 11th month in the past 12 of declines. At $2.456T outstanding, it is 4.9% below the record high in July ‘08. After a flat reading in Aug, (didn’t fall b/c of the CARS [...]
I think this a map of the flora on your skin is potentially really useful, but it also leads to lines like this:
… Your mouth is more like my mouth than it is like your armpit …
One conclusion of the exercise was that the oils on your [...]
I just finished presenting Tim's (and Rob's and Kurt's) paper in our Department Seminar Series:
Appalachian State UniversityAll seminars are in Raley 3010 at 2:00 P.M. unless otherwise indicated.
...
November 6, John Whitehead, "Angler Heterogeneity and the Species-Specific Demand for Marine Recreational Fishing"
They were wowed [...]
While I am waiting for my delayed flight (crew is late arriving form orlando), I have some quik thoughts on NFP.
The data today was pretty ugly — 10.2% Unemployment rate, 17.5% under employed, the highest on record.
The recession that began in December 2007 has now shed over 7.3 million jobs. [...]
That's right! Politics trumps tax and economic policy yet again!
Obama put pen to paper this morning and signed the Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Bill of 2009 into law.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for folks who can use this to buy a house. Despite the [...]
In our post this morning on the October job numbers, we wrote that the third quarter’s increased productivity was a sign that employers have been successful in meeting their demand with fewer employees. Doing more (or about the same) with less is just one factor that’s holding back job [...]
From MarketWatch: Consumer debt drops for record 8th straight month Outstanding consumer debt fell at a 7.2% annual rate in September, the eighth consecutive decline, the Federal Reserve reported Friday. Click on graph for larger image in new window.A new WPA might not be the best unemployment fix
HERE is Paul Krugman:As it is, job-creation efforts are generally indirect. Tax cuts and transfers in the hope that people will spend them; aid to state governments in the hope of averting layoffs. Even infrastructure spending is routed through [...]
On an average day, two pedestrians are killed by motor vehicles in the UK.
Only two pedestrian per year are killed by bicycles, almost always on the road.
On pavements and verges, motor vehicles kill around [...]
Link here. The final paragraph:
Sportz is everywhere. There's so much of it that it's contributed to the inflation of all the numbers and values in the sports industry, and as a result we now have a Sports Bubble. It's up to each of us to stand up to the TV or the [...]
The title comes from a message from David Zetland (at aguanomics) who, besides asking questions with obvious answers, thinks posts about cow farts cheapen his blog. To that I say, nothing can cheapen our blog--er, or something like [...]
...They understand that public opinion matters...they understand that it’s a little harder to criticize someone after you’ve met him and he’s given you free cookies...they couldn't possibly have expected to change anybody’s mind, they understand that it’s better to talk to your critics than to avoid them. Waldman talks about [...]
On an average day, two pedestrians are killed by motor vehicles in the UK.
Only two pedestrian per year are killed by bicycles, almost always on the road.
On pavements and verges, motor vehicles kill around [...]
Can we handle rapid technological change?
OVER at Angry Bear, Rdan posts something by Martin Ford, in which he ponders the issue of technology-induced long-term structural unemployment:I'm not talking about far fetched science fiction-level technology here: this is really a simple extrapolation of the expert systems and specialized algorithms [...]
On an average day, two pedestrians are killed by motor vehicles in the UK.
Only two pedestrian per year are killed by bicycles, almost always on the road.
On pavements and verges, motor vehicles kill around [...]
Money hacker: The wealthiest kids in the world (via Wall Street Fighter).
The Big Picture has a scary US unemployment map (2004-present).
Alice Schroeder analyzes Buffett’s Burlington purchase–and claims he’s not as all-out bullish on the economy as he sounds.
EcoSalon has the stories behind [...]
The Home Buying Tax Credit costs what? On the day President Obama signed the extension of the home buying tax credit, Rasmussen Reports released the results of a poll today saying that 57% favor the $8,000 tax credit for 1st time home buyers but when they hear that it will [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the Washington Post:
Brian Czech repeats one of today’s most frequently heard mantras – namely, that continued economic and population growth spell disaster for the planet and humanity (Letters, Nov. 5).
Virtually all available evidence contradicts this doomsday claim. For example, the earth’s [...]
Here’s a letter that I sent this moring to the Washington Post:
Michael Gerson, Charles Krauthammer, and Eugene Robinson speculate today about Tuesday’s election results. What do these results signal about the Republican and Democratic parties? About Pres. Obama? About Michael Steele? Sarah Palin? Glenn Beck?
Speculations centered on [...]
Yesterday, the House passed a bill that extends the homebuyer credit an extra six months by a vote of 403-12. The Senate passed the same bill on Wednesday 98-0. Overall, the tax credit stimulus is expected to cost $24 billion:
Under the measure, an $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers would [...]Today's update on October's employment status is neither surprising nor encouraging. The U.S. economy is still bleeding jobs, but that's hardly shocking at this point. It's been clear for some time now that the risk of a jobless recovery is high.
Nonfarm payrolls shed another 190,000 positions last month, a [...]
Unemployment continued to rise in October, a sign that the highly touted recovery isn't all the administration and Wall Street would like us to believe. From Reuters via Yahoo! finance:
The U.S. jobless rate unexpectedly jumped to a 26-1/2-year high of 10.2 percent last month, adding to pressure on the' [...]
Our current sad economic state has been dubbed a number of things. The Great Recession. The he-cession. The credit crunch. One thing, however, it clear. It’s not the Porncession. Because that industry is doing just fine, thank you very much:
1. LA: Driver for the BUS [...]
Is the Fed really helpless?
PAUL KRUGMAN responds to discussion on the David Beckworth chart—tracking nominal spending—that I posted yesterday. He discusses a liquidity trap model he drew up in 1998, while thinking about the Japanese economy, and writes:In that model, prices are assumed sticky in the short run, [...]
On an average day, two pedestrians are killed by motor vehicles in the UK.
Only two pedestrian per year are killed by bicycles, almost always on the road.
On pavements and verges, motor vehicles kill around [...]
The unemployment rate has surpassed the 10% mark for the first time since 1983, two months earlier than many had widely predicted. The jobless rate increased to 10.2% in October from 9.8% the month prior.
The Number Are Grim
October marked the 22nd straight month that the country has reported job losses [...]
A few more graphs ...Commenting on this post, Nathaniel asks me to re-post this essay (entitled “I Won’t Vote!”) — or, I think that this is the essay he’s asking about. Then again, perhaps it’s not, because a (confessedly very) quick look turns up no evidence that I posted it earlier.
Or maybe [...]
To reduce joblessness, target joblessness
SEVERAL (though by no means all) of Europe's larger economies have come through the current recession without experiencing quite the large jump in unemployment that has plagued America, turning on its head the usual perception of European labour markets as persistently beset by high [...]
On an average day, two pedestrians are killed by motor vehicles in the UK.
Only two pedestrian per year are killed by bicycles, almost always on the road.
On pavements and verges, motor vehicles kill around [...]
Here’s another one of those stories that will make your blood pressure boil: Instead of moving forward with broad regulatory protections of economics system, we are undoing effective regulations that protect investors.
Floyd Norris has the details. Under the guise of helping small businesses, the accounting requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley are being [...]
By Spencer,Let me get this right – with hours to prepare, once on TV, for 3 minutes Obama behaved “wildly disconnected and inappropriately” for 3 minutes to his normally scheduled audience before moving on to the Fort Hood tragedy that got him the air time in the first place?
Compare this [...]
What happened to mutual-fund fees and expenses in the wake of the financial crisis? Lipper has crunched the numbers, and it seems that the tumble in the stock market didn't have much effect on expenses:
Surprisingly, the median management expense for most asset classes was largely unchanged from 2008 levels;' [...]
The [un]employment report headline numbers were ugly, but the internals are even less encouraging ...Steven Horwitz
The unemployment rate jumps to 10.2% for October.
Yesterday, Congress extends unemployment benefits.
My intro students (thanks to Pete and Dave's excellent textbook exposition) understand that supply curves slope up due the opportunity cost associated with alternative uses of the resource in question. The higher the opportunity cost of [...]
Charles Gasparino has an interesting column in the WSJ in which he details the bailout mania that seems to have gripped the Feds over the past 30 years. He argues that repeated past actions by the Feds since the 1980's have shown that the next time that large financial [...]
Oct Payrolls fell by 190k, 15k more than expected BUT net revisions were up by 91k over the two prior months. The unemployment rate rose to 10.2%, .3% more than expected and up from 9.8% in Sept as household employment fell by 589k and the labor force shrunk by 31k. [...]
America continues to bleed jobs
THE American labour market has opted not to keep us all in suspense, wondering whether and when the unemployment rate might crest the 10% level. As of the month of October, the unemployment rate stood at 10.2%—only the second time in America's postwar history [...]
"the tax code encourages Americans to live in big, [...]
There are only very few scholars — and even fewer economists — whose every word is worthwhile to read. George Selgin is in that elite group.
Here’s Selgin’s review of Benn Steil’s and Manuel Hinds’s wonderful, if flawed, book, Money, Markets & Sovereignty. The opening paragraphs of the review [...]
Here are the two authors who have taken on the subject of Ayn Rand and her influence.
[...]A wonderful video recommended by Sean Malone
[...]It’s up to 10.2%. Trouble ahead. Trouble behind. The politics is going to be very tough. More pressure to “fix” the economy. The possibility that we are in the mess we are in because of past attempts to fix the economy is very alien to most politicians and most economists. [...]
Housing prices have been propped up, banks and auto companies have been bailed out, regulations have been increased, debt covenants have been violated, unemployment insurance has been extended. FULL ARTICLE by - Ganesh Rathnam
Partisan politics is morally distorting. Paul Jacob offers a common-sensical example of why.
[...]
The promise of laissez-faire performs the same function for the Right as the promise of unlimited abundance under communism did for Stalin: the promise of a future utopia to make current sacrifices worthwhile. FULL ARTICLE by Murray N. Rothbard
Levitt and Dubner raise an interesting possibility that deserves careful scrutiny, not ridicule. An immediate and drastic reductions in carbon emissions is not the only way to address climate change. FULL ARTICLE by Robert Murphy
[...]
[...]
