Economics Roundtable
May 2014 Payroll Employment
After 76 months, we finally got back to the prerecession level of payroll employment.
Click on the image to get a bigger version.
Jobs
The best summary of the state of our economy is the graph (below) of employment as a fraction of population for people over 16 years old. The decrease is large, but the most troubling feature of the graph is the flat trend .
Click on the image to get a bigger version.
Graph-of-the-Year Candidates
Donald Marron likes European interest rates. Click on the image to get a bigger version. Can you find three distinct subperiods?
Brad DeLong favors the U.S. gdp gap.
Remember M1?
Money Supply M1 growth is now over 20% per year over a 12 month lag. M1 growth has touched 20% before, but not with excess reserves of $1.6 trillion. Where is M1 headed?
Click on the chart for a larger version.
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- Recent Entries
… is David Henderson’s response – in the Comments section of this EconLog post – ...
Guided by the belief that all lives have equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has invested nearly $40 billion in global health, global development, and US education since 2000. The foundation’s vision is a world where every person has the chance to lead a healthy, productive life.
Since 2014, ...
Some claim conservatism was the biggest loser of the 2016 election. Others say that conservatism and the GOP have been saved from obliteration. Which is it? Both? Neither? What happens now? Do conservative ideas still have appeal and value in today’s political climate, or do they need to change? How ...
…. is from The Power of the Dog, a 2005 crime thriller novel by Don Winslow, based on the Drug Enforcement Agency’s involvement with the War on Drugs, published after six years of writing and research by the author. The section below is about one of the main ...
• At 7:00 AM ET, The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the results for the mortgage purchase applications index.
• At 8:30 AM, The initial weekly unemployment claims report will be released. The consensus is for 250 thousand initial claims, up from 235 thousand the previous week.
President-elect Donald Trump conceded Tuesday there is "some connectivity" between human activity and climate change and wavered on whether he would pull the United States out of international accords aimed at combating the phenomenon, which scientists overwhelmingly agree is caused by human activity.
The statements ...I think I could confuse some people if I applied for the position of Director of the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources:
Please distribute this announcement to individuals you think may be interested for the Director position of theHaub School for the Environment and Natural Resources. It ...
Tax policy proposals can be the product of years of deliberation; other times, they crop up overnight. To be effective in our mission, we at the Tax Foundation have to remain vigilant through the months and even years of hearings and debate, while remaining nimble enough to spring into ...
From the American Chemistry Council: Chemical Activity Barometer Continues Strong Performance with Eighth Consecutive Gain
The Chemical Activity Barometer (CAB), a leading economic indicator created by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), featured another solid gain of ...
David Henderson’s excellent post today, at EconLog, on the zombie-like character of mercantilism prompts me to issue the ...
This Thanksgiving post has been an annual tradition at CD, and I feature a slightly revised version again this year!
Like in previous years, most ...
Simon Wren-Lewis:
Populism and the media: This could be the subtitle of the talk I will be giving later today. I will have more to say in later posts, plus a link to the full text..., but I thought I would make this important point here about why ...
This Thanksgiving post has been an annual tradition at CD, and I feature a slightly revised version again this year!
Like in previous years, most ...
The People’s Bank of China may be in the process of losing its collective mind. Again. In August 2015 and January 2016, China’s central bank changed currency policy in opaque fashion. The result was intense capital outflow and ultimately a policy reversal. It may be happening again; if so, the ...
Granting amnesty to illegal-immigrant workers would boost the U.S. economy more than trying to deport them, according to new research that highlights a tension between Republican plans to both crack down on unauthorized workers and rejuvenate growth.
The study, by two economists at City University of New York, puts the economic contribution ...
Ellyn Terry at the Atlanta Fed's macroblog:
Outside Looking In: Why Has Labor Force Participation Increased?: The labor force participation rate (LFPR) is an estimate of the share of the population actively engaged in the labor market. The LFPR has increased about 30 basis points over the past year ...
First, these October existing home sales closed escrow before the recent increase in mortgage rates (rates started increasing after the election). Also, the recent increase in mortgage rates will probably have little impact on November closed ...
President-elect Trump wants to cut taxes and increase investment in U.S. infrastructure (or at least provide a tax break for existing infrastructure investment) and doesn’t seem especially worried if the result is a larger fiscal deficit.
The call for larger fiscal deficits has some parallels to the agenda I think makes ...
Here’s a interesting breakdown of the Trump-Clinton vote from Jim Tankersley at the Washington Post.
According to the Brookings analysis, the less-than-500 counties that Clinton won nationwide combined to generate 64 percent of America’s economic activity in 2015. The more-than-2,600 counties that Trump won combined to generate 36 percent of the ...
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is the premise:
Imagine that a new U.S. president, different from the one we just elected, set out to maximize the number of illegal Mexican immigrants. Maybe he or she saw electoral advantage in this, or maybe just ...
Here’s a letter to a long-time correspondent:
Mr. L. ____
Mr. L. ____:
Thanks as always for your e-mail.
In response to
The GOP Congress and incoming Trump administration will need to make some decisions in the coming weeks on how to proceed with a legislative agenda in 2017. The course they choose to take is likely to define the rest of the Trump presidency, just as decisions President-elect Obama made in ...
One reason — a secondary reason, perhaps, but not an insignificant one — why Hillary Clinton lost Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, whose 64 electoral votes were carried by Barack Obama in 2012, was a decline in turnout and Democratic percentage in their major central cities.
The primary reason, as I ...
Hey Democrats, want help to rally the country around Donald Trump? Here’s a great idea: Have a crowd of wealthy, out-of-touch Manhattan liberals (who can afford $849 tickets to “Hamilton”) boo Vice President-elect Mike Pence while the cast of the Broadway show lectures him on diversity.
The Democratic Party’s ...
Total existing-home sales, which are completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, grew 2.0 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.60 million in October from an upwardly revised 5.49 million in September. October's sales pace ...
Just a handful of modern big-city bankruptcies have revealed foundational questions about chapter 9's fit within federal courts and constitutional jurisprudence. Given that chapter 9 no longer is simply an adjustment of bond debt, bankrupt cities restructure a wide range of claims in their plans, including those arising ...
… is from page 18 of Ronald Coase‘s and Ning Wang’s superb 2012 book, How China ...
Every year, over 2,000 men and women make the journey home from federal prison and return to the streets of our nation’s capital. For ex-convicts, the transition back to everyday life is often bleak. These “returned citizens” exit the prison gates only to be faced with an equally daunting ...
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Interest rates have increased moderately since Donald Trump’s election victory two weeks ago and analysts say that yields may trend higher in the months ahead. What does that imply for the stock market and the economy? As a preliminary answer, let’s model the possibilities by analyzing the historical record since ...
In Miami, health care providers spent about $14,423 per Medicare patient in 2010. But in Minneapolis, average spending on Medicare enrollees that year was $7,819, just over half as much. In fact, the U.S. is filled with regional disparities in medical spending. Why is this?
One explanation focuses on providers: ...
Here’s some useful myth-busting about health-care from John Graham. A slice:
As I’ve previously written, I agree utterly with ...
Anti (very anti): "Ranch dressing is what’s wrong with America".
Pro: "Hey, haters, keep your hands off my Ranch dressing".
I'm not a fan myself, but I score it pro by a technical knockout.
But always remember that "Government is just the name we give to things we do together". Ha!
LA has like 9,000 food trucks, New York has 5,500, Chicago has 90 and it's impossible to function.
Fine piece by George Will.
Today, many Americans seem to relish being furious. An indignation industry has battened on the Republican Party, feeding this addiction. This industry is inimical to conservatism’s health. . . .
Furthermore, in politics, style and substance are braided. Many things, and ...
Photo Credit: Attila Malarik || In many but not all situations, doing half is a smart idea!
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Four major stock indexes, the DJIA, S&P 500, Nasdaq, Russell 2000 all ...
As a holiday tradition, Thanksgiving has been around for 395 years. And though the first Thanksgiving celebration likely didn't feature turkey at the center of the dining festivities, in the years since, the idea of serving turkey as the main protein ...
2. In defense of publish or perish?
3. Will Trump label China a “currency manipulator”? And what do the Chinese ...
Is it a kind of Flynn effect for the elderly?:
Dementia is actually on the wane. And when people do get dementia, they get it at older and older ages.
Previous studies found the same trend but involved much ...