Economics Roundtable

Calculated Risk

Read the Bill McBride interview.


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.


June Payroll Employment

The slowndown in employment growth over the past few months is starting to become more apparent in the graph below.

Click on the image to get a bigger version.


Focus on the Problem

U.S. payroll employment peaked at 132.5 million jobs in February 2001. For April 2012, U.S. payroll employment had reached 133.0 million jobs, marking the third month in a row above the February 2001 level.


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.

Finally, it's hard to argue against the payroll employment graph below (straight from FRED) and the comparison across recessions (courtesy of Calculated Risk).


Looking Up At 2001

In February 2001, U.S. payroll employment peaked at 132.5 million. The November 2011 figure of 131.7 million still falls 800,000 jobs short of the earlier peak.


Click on the chart for a larger version.


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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June 18, 2013, 2:05 am, 1109152

At the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), India‘s state-owned telecom company, a message emerges from a dot matrix printer addressing a soldier’s Army unit in Delhi. ”GRANDMOTHER SERIOUS. 15 DAYS LEAVE EXTENSION,” it reads. It’s one of about 5,000 such missives still being sent every day by telegram – ...


June 18, 2013, 2:04 am, 1109151
(June 18, 2013 12:26 AM, by Bryan Caplan) I'm a firm believer in stereotype accuracy. I just finished re-reading my favorite chapters from Lee, Jussim, and McCauley's excellent Stereotype Accuracy: Toward Appreciating Group Differences. The book was published in 1995; Jussim's recent summary brings us up to date.... (0 COMMENTS)


June 18, 2013, 1:33 am, 1109150
Germany's economic recovery began 65 years ago this week when a strong-willed economist laid out the path forward and the United States, Britain and France followed it, an economist writes.


June 18, 2013, 1:33 am, 1109149

From my op-ed in today’s Investor’s Business Daily:

Shale production is about to turn the country into a net exporter of natural gas, and oil is being produced at such a clip that crude imports have fallen this year to a 25-year low. Remarkably, this oil and natural ...


June 18, 2013, 1:25 am, 1109148

Hi Friends!  This post particularly applies to those that read me via RSS, which may be half of my readership when you consider all of the republishers of my work.  At present, Google has stopped working on Feedburner, and earning money from Feedburner, which currently handles most if not all ...


June 17, 2013, 11:03 pm, 1109122
Earlier today, Robin Harding at the Financial Times released a market moving story of the Fed: Fed likely to signal tapering move is close

Ben Bernanke is likely to signal that the US Federal Reserve is close to tapering down its $85bn-a-month in asset purchases when he holds ...


June 17, 2013, 10:45 pm, 1109121


June 17, 2013, 10:35 pm, 1109120

Why would these hundreds of organizations and contracting companies be willing to take gigantic amounts of the taxpayers' money when everyone agrees that the money cannot be spent sensibly and that the system already in place cannot function effectively or efficiently to attain ...


June 17, 2013, 10:04 pm, 1109118

Chart of the Day: America’s 30-Year Project to Make the Rich Even Richer - Here’s a remarkable chart from EPI..  (hat tip rjs)

Actually, no: Strike that. It’s true that in a normal world it would be remarkable, but in the world we live in it’s actually totally unsurprising. ...


June 17, 2013, 10:04 pm, 1109117

Guest post by Michael Cahill

The Affordable Care Act’s Prevention and Public Health Fund: Why it needs to succeed for America’s Economic Future

What will it take for the Affordable Care, known more commonly as Obamacare, to succeed? Realistically speaking it will take a lot of things for the ACA to be ...


June 17, 2013, 10:04 pm, 1109116

by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt

Health Care Thoughts: Conference Wrap-up

So I do some conferences with a lot of people who are way smarter than me, people literally and figuratively on the cutting edge.

What thoughts are dominating health care these days, especially the provider community? Here is a list of frequent talking ...


June 17, 2013, 8:34 pm, 1109103
In ten minutes you will be redirected to EconomicsOne.com the new home of Economics One where you can read new posts, access old posts, and sign up to follow on Twitter @EconomicsOne or RSS. Thank you.


June 17, 2013, 8:04 pm, 1109102

John Maynard Keynes met Franklin Roosevelt on Monday, May 28, 1934. Both afterward said polite things to Felix Frankfurter, who had urged the two to confer: Keynes described the conversation was “fascinating and illuminating,” while Roosevelt wrote that “I had a grand talk and liked him immensely.”

But the best-known ...


June 17, 2013, 7:33 pm, 1109101

The Center for American Progress has released a report by Adriana Kugler, Robert Lynch, and Patrick Oakford arguing that legalizing undocumented immigrants will generate significant benefits for Social Security’s financing. According to SSA, about half of undocumented immigrants currently pay payroll taxes, using a false or expired Social ...


June 17, 2013, 7:03 pm, 1109058
In addition to Case-Shiller, CoreLogic, FHFA and LPS, I'm also watching the FNC, Zillow and several other house price indexes.

From FNC: FNC Index: Rise in Home Prices Picks up in April

The latest FNC Residential Price Index™ (RPI) shows that U.S. home prices continue to rise ...


June 17, 2013, 6:46 pm, 1109057
Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs has targeted top entrepreneurs in developing nations for increased loans and consulting services.


June 17, 2013, 6:44 pm, 1109056

In addition to the fair housing case that Alan noted, the Supreme Court also granted cert in a bankruptcy case, Law v. Siegel. Having listened to many bad jokes about my last name over the years, my initial reaction was to set up ...


June 17, 2013, 6:04 pm, 1109055

Starting in 1994, soon before the 1996 welfare reform bill (PRWORA) the state of Florida explored what was roughtly a pilot version the “Family Transition Program” (FTP).  I recall reading at the time that this was the only reformed welfare program with a hard time limit on benefits.   Importantly, ...


June 17, 2013, 5:33 pm, 1109053
Via email here is another update from Michael Pettis at China Financial Markets. What follows is from Michael Pettis.

Special points

Europe is attempting to resolve domestic imbalances by forcing them onto their trade partners. This will end badly, especially for Germany. China’s new lending, ...


June 17, 2013, 5:33 pm, 1109052
I didn't know the answer until I read this.


June 17, 2013, 5:25 pm, 1109051
There seems to be a growing consensus that the recent rise in long-term interest rates is the result of the Fed indicating it may taper its asset purchases. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's comments before Congress on May 22 and the subsequent release of FOMC minutes allegedly sparked concerns ...


June 17, 2013, 5:04 pm, 1108990
Late credit-card payments declined for major lenders in May, continuing a steady performance that has been bolstered by recent signs that the U.S. economic recovery is gradually gaining traction.


June 17, 2013, 5:04 pm, 1108989
A spat about government participation in the movie and music industry is threatening to sour talks for a trans-Atlantic trade deal before they’ve even begun.


June 17, 2013, 5:03 pm, 1108988

Tim Duy:

FOMC Meeting Begins Tomorrow, by Tim Duy: This week's FOMC meeting is shaping up to be quite the event. Not for the actually policy result itself, which is widely expected to be unchanged, but for the subsequent press conference with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. The Fed's communication ...


June 17, 2013, 4:05 pm, 1108985

…the city’s per capita income, averaged over its 684,799 residents, is just $15,261 per year. (That’s less than half the income of neighboring Livonia.) Auto insurance alone eats up a good $4,000 of that, for residents with a car.

And then comes the litany of municipal woes: Detroit has the highest ...


June 17, 2013, 3:33 pm, 1108982

The federal government has been borrowing rapidly to finance recent budget deficits. But that’s not the only reason it’s gone deeper into debt. Uncle Sam also borrows to issue loans, build up cash, and make other financial investments.

Those financial activities have accounted for an important part of government borrowing in ...


June 17, 2013, 3:24 pm, 1108981
There are just a few days until we gather at the Henry Wellcome Foundation Conference Centre, Euston Road for our annual conference. A few places remain.We've put together what we hope you'll agree is a wonderful programme combined with a simply unbeatable delegate rate!


June 17, 2013, 3:04 pm, 1108920
A broad deepening of fiscal integration leading toward a "fiscal union" in the euro zone requires deeper public support than currently exists both inside and outside Germany, ECB Governing Council member Jens Weidmann said.


June 17, 2013, 3:04 pm, 1108919
At this week's Fed monetary policy meeting, it comes down more to what officials will say, than what they'll do.


June 17, 2013, 3:03 pm, 1108918
Employment-Population Ratio


June 17, 2013, 3:03 pm, 1108917
Weekly Update: One of key questions for 2013 is Will Housing inventory bottom this year?. Since this is a very important question, I'm tracking inventory weekly in 2013.

There is a clear seasonal pattern for inventory, withthe low point for inventory in late December or early ...


June 17, 2013, 2:46 pm, 1108916


June 17, 2013, 2:46 pm, 1108915


June 17, 2013, 2:45 pm, 1108914

We have been advocates of the theory that fiscal tightening is threatening economic recovery (last week, for example).

John Taylor objects to the view that fiscal tightness has been the key to the slowness of growth in ...


June 17, 2013, 2:36 pm, 1108913

The federal government has been borrowing rapidly to finance recent budget deficits. But that’s not the only reason it’s gone deeper into debt. Uncle Sam also borrows to issue loans, build up cash, and make other financial investments.

Those financial activities have accounted for an important part of government borrowing in ...


June 17, 2013, 2:05 pm, 1108912

Not exactly correct on all point, but worth a read.

In fact, there is one anarchist who could be considered influential in Washington, but he wasn’t among the activists who participated in the Occupy movement—he died nearly twenty years ago. His name is Murray Rothbard, and, among small-government Republicans, he ...


June 17, 2013, 2:05 pm, 1108911

June 17, 2013, 2:05 pm, 1108910

The football coaches at Army, Navy and Air Force.

Here is more (mostly on other topics), hat tip to @jtlevy.  Here are some comparable answers for state government employees.


June 17, 2013, 2:04 pm, 1108909
Traditional economic theory states that, if you want to get less of something, make it more expensive. An alarm clock like this, then, seems to be a solution that traditional economists could get behind. Behavioral economists, on the other hand, would likely argue that people are ...


June 17, 2013, 2:04 pm, 1108908
Former economic adviser to George W. Bush, Harvard professor, and prolific textbook author Greg Mankiw has an essay forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Perspectives entitled "Defending the One Percent." Technically, the essay should probably be titled "Defending the One Percent who Made Their Money by Creating Value ...


June 17, 2013, 2:04 pm, 1108907
Research tells us what a lot of people already assume- namely, that money makes people act like jerks.

On Money and Its Effect on Morality... originally appeared on About.com Economics on Monday, June 17th, 2013 at 12:50:57.

Permalink | Comment |


June 17, 2013, 2:04 pm, 1108906
Robert Fogel, Nobel-Prize winning economic historian, passed away last week at the age of 86. The economics community has responded by writing a number of thoughtful pieces about his life and work.

An Obituary for Nobel Laureate Robert Fogel... originally appeared on About.com ...


June 17, 2013, 1:34 pm, 1108903
A new Mish iOS app for iPhone and iPad devices is now available on the App Store, and a new version of the Android app (compatible with phones and tablets), is now available on the Google Play store.

The original iPhone app is still available ...


June 17, 2013, 1:33 pm, 1108902
Unlike many of my colleagues, I teach summer school. While UCLA faculty can be paid 1/9th of their salary for teaching summer school, I choose to collect $6,000 in extra salary. My 9 month salary at UCLA isn't $54,000. The "profit" (total tuition - 6000 - payment to my ...


June 17, 2013, 1:33 pm, 1108901
An International Monetary Fund report paints a picture of a tepid American economy, a situation that would be better if not for policy mistakes and misplaced priorities, an economist writes.


June 17, 2013, 1:33 pm, 1108900

“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters” is the pithy and tweetable way the Founders Fund, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, asks the question, “What happened to the future?”

How did it get away from us? Maybe we regulated away the sci-fi future that our never-happened tiger ...


June 17, 2013, 1:33 pm, 1108899

North Dakota set another new monthly oil production record at 793,302 barrels per day (bpd) in April according to oil production data released last Friday by North Dakota’s Department of Mineral Resources (see chart above). For the ninth month in a ...


June 17, 2013, 1:24 pm, 1108898
Here's a teaching resource suggested by one of our colleagues who attended the Wow Economics CPD event in Birmingham last week. We were discussing a resource called the Average Wage game (available as an individual download from this website) which asks students to categorise occupations into those jobs with pay ...


June 17, 2013, 1:04 pm, 1108835
New York manufacturers say business conditions returned to expansion this month but the subindexes covering current activity are much weaker, according to the New York Fed's Empire State Manufacturing Survey.


June 17, 2013, 1:03 pm, 1108834
The bottom for inventory is a key topic for 2013 ...

From Tim Ellis at Redfin: Here Comes the Inventory

Increasing home prices are giving more sellers sufficient equity to sell, and sellers who already had equity are being lured into the market after seeing their neighbor’s ...


June 17, 2013, 12:46 pm, 1108833


June 17, 2013, 12:44 pm, 1108831
The Supreme Court granted certiorari today in MOUNT HOLLY, NJ, ET AL. V. MT. HOLLY GARDENS CITIZENS, on the question whether Fair Housing Act claims of race discrimination in the sale, rental or financing of housing can be proven based on evidence of disparate impact. The ...


June 17, 2013, 12:36 pm, 1108830

by Roger Koppl

I was thinking of the NSA scandal while jogging through Rome’s Park of the Aqueducts  this morning. I guess it was that setting that made me think of our new computer-geek overlords as a virtual Praetorian Guard.  Augustus created the original Praetorian Guard about 27 BCE ...


June 17, 2013, 12:36 pm, 1108829

Housing starts are expected to total 929,000 in tomorrow’s update for May, based on The Capital Spectator's average econometric forecast (seasonally adjusted annual rate). That’s a moderate increase vs. the previously reported 853,000 for April. Meanwhile, The Capital Spectator's average projected gain for May is slightly below the numbers in ...


June 17, 2013, 12:35 pm, 1108828
A


June 17, 2013, 12:35 pm, 1108827

If you want to wade through some unutterably depressing reading on this Monday morning, you should spend some time with the official Detroit Proposal for Creditors. It starts by noting that the city’s per capita income, averaged over its 684,799 residents, is just $15,261 per year. (That’s less than ...


June 17, 2013, 12:04 pm, 1108824
(June 17, 2013 11:45 AM, by Art Carden) Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to... (1 COMMENTS)


June 17, 2013, 11:33 am, 1108823

For those who don't know, my hobby is coaching softball and baseball. Unfortunately, last year, my daughter's softball abilities finally outgrew my coaching abilities and I had to turn her over to a 'real' team. Now I coach my 11 year old's travel baseball team (Crush Baseball Club). This past ...


June 17, 2013, 11:24 am, 1108822
1. Faster and faster super-computers:

Tianhe-2, developed by the government-run National University of Defence Technology, topped the latest list of the fastest 500 supercomputers, by a team of international researchers.
They said the news was a "surprise" since the system had not been ...


June 17, 2013, 11:04 am, 1108758
A roundup of economic news from around the Web.


June 17, 2013, 11:04 am, 1108759
The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet has expanded, with assets climbing to $3.41 trillion during the week ended June 12.


June 17, 2013, 11:03 am, 1108757
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) reported the housing market index (HMI) increased 8 points in June to 52. Any number above 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as good than poor.

From the NAHB: Builder Confidence Hits Major Milestone in June

Builder ...


June 17, 2013, 10:46 am, 1108756


June 17, 2013, 10:45 am, 1108755

A new book by the Levy Institute’s Randall Wray and Éric Tymoigne (release date July 31):

The Rise and Fall of Money Manager Capitalism: Minsky’s half century from World War Two to the Great Recession

The book studies the trends that led to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, ...


June 17, 2013, 10:44 am, 1108754
Robert Skidelsky is best known for his definitive three-volume biography of John Maynard Keynes. It hardly surprising, then, that he begins his latest book, How Much is Enough? (co-authored with his son, the philosopher Edward Skidelsky), with a puzzle posed by the master himself. ...


June 17, 2013, 10:36 am, 1108753

By Simon Johnson

Global megabanks and their friends are pushing back hard against the idea that additional reforms are needed – beyond what is supposed to be implemented as part of the Dodd-Frank 2010 financial legislation.  The latest salvo comes from Goldman Sachs which, in a recent report, “Measuring the ...


June 17, 2013, 10:36 am, 1108752

Should the next Labour government embrace fiscal conservativism as Hopi Sen suggests? I'm genuinely not sure.

Let's start from the premise that, for a given inflation target (or indeed a target for anything else), a tighter fiscal policy must imply a looser monetary policy. Fiscal conservativism thus ...


June 17, 2013, 10:35 am, 1108751

We have been writing for the last two months about the simple proposition that government can in fact work much better, faster and cheaper. Despite varying opinions about the appropriate size of government, politicians should be able to agree that the taxpayer money government spends must be spent wisely.

Politicians, ...


June 17, 2013, 10:05 am, 1108749

Robert Fogel died a few days ago. He was a prominent figure in the academic economic history profession for five decades, virtually from the time he burst onto the scene with the publication of a polished-up version of his Johns Hopkins Ph.D. dissertation, Railroads and American Economic Growth, in 1964. This ...


June 17, 2013, 9:03 am, 1108702
From the NY Fed: Empire State Manufacturing Survey

The June 2013 Empire State Manufacturing Survey indicates that conditions for New York manufacturers improved modestly. The general business conditions index—the most comprehensive of the survey’s measures—rose nine points to 7.8. Nevertheless, most other indicators in the survey fell. The new ...


June 17, 2013, 8:36 am, 1108701

By James Kwak

For years now, Anat Admati has been leading the charge for higher capital requirements for banks, especially large banks that benefit from government subsidies, first in a widely cited paper and more recently in her book with Martin Hellwig, The Banker’s New Clothes. Admati’s great ...


June 17, 2013, 8:05 am, 1108696

The Screen Actors Guild and several players’ unions have filed briefs supporting Mr. Hart, saying that athletes, actors and other celebrities must have the right to control the use of their identities and to harvest the financial fruits of their fame. The movie industry, book publishers and news organizations, ...


June 17, 2013, 8:05 am, 1108698

While the ethics behind holograms of deceased celebrities might be questionable (in the words of a parody Twitter account called Aaliyah’s Ghost, “The best duets imo are the ones where both artists are alive & agreed to work together”), copyright permissions and objections from various estates, in addition to the ...


June 17, 2013, 8:05 am, 1108697

June 17, 2013, 8:05 am, 1108695

Responding to this link, Ryan writes:

I think the secular decline in various measures of dynamism is a pretty important topic, largely because we haven’t been able to figure out what’s causing it. We’re seeing it not only in worker flows but also job flows, migration, startup rates, etc.

Industry ...


June 17, 2013, 8:05 am, 1108694

At 7:03 p.m. on May 25, my dog went to the bathroom in front of the Chinese massage place up the block from my house in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

I was not there, but I know this is true because a “poop alert” popped up on my laptop, 22 miles away ...


June 17, 2013, 8:05 am, 1108692

1. Greg Mankiw on income inequality (pdf).

2. Elysium official trailer #2.

3. Mistakes in German architecture, a three-way interview.  Pretty amazing, and full of lessons about management and infrastructure and social capital and fiscal policy and principal-agent problems, not to mention the future of Europe: “The pure truth ...


June 17, 2013, 8:05 am, 1108693

Yana flew yesterday from Newark airport and will be arriving in Mumbai shortly, heading in a few days to live in Bangalore.  She will be working with Forus Health to decrease preventable blindness among India’s poor, in part by aiding with their distribution of an affordable screening device.

Her ...


June 17, 2013, 8:05 am, 1108690

I suspect nothing in this book can be trusted.  Still, it is one of the more stimulating reads of the year, though I have to be careful not to draw serious inferences from it.  Does its possible fictionality make it easier to create so many interesting passages?:

I ...


June 17, 2013, 8:05 am, 1108691

Megan McArdle updates us:

Kaiser Permanente is one of the places that always gets cited as a model by health care reformers.  It’s the biggest insurer in California, using a model that ended up being the basis for the HMO revolution.  Kaiser owns its own hospitals, pays its doctors a ...


June 17, 2013, 8:05 am, 1108689

For a few years now Dani Rodrik has been tweeting about how second-rate, illegitimate, and undemocratic the current Turkish regime is.  He never convinced me, not because I held firmly to some opposing perspective, but simply because I don’t follow Turkish politics closely enough for claims of any kind to ...


June 17, 2013, 8:05 am, 1108688

June 17, 2013, 8:05 am, 1108687

Here is a very good discussion by Nelson Schwartz, here is one excerpt:

He is not predicting an imminent resurgence. Like most academic economists, Mr. Cowen focuses on the next quarter-century rather than the next quarter. But new technologies like artificial intelligence and online education, increased domestic energy production ...


June 17, 2013, 8:05 am, 1108685

Some 74 percent of professors aged 49-67 plan to delay retirement past age 65 or never retire at all, according to a new Fidelity Investments study of higher education faculty. While 69 percent of those surveyed cited financial concerns, an even higher percentage of professors said love of their careers ...


June 17, 2013, 8:05 am, 1108686

It’s worth emphasizing that the recent rise in interest rates has been a global phenomenon, not just something seen in the United States.

That is from James Hamilton.


June 17, 2013, 8:05 am, 1108684

The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART) represents more than 85 percent of the assisted reproduction industry. SART requires that its members work only with agencies that limit compensation to egg-donors to around $5000 or a maximum of $10,000 (figures decided upon by the ethics committee of an affiliated ...


June 17, 2013, 8:04 am, 1108683

… is from page 70 of David Friedman’s 1996 book, Hidden Order:

There are two way we can produce automobiles.  We can build them in Detroit or we can grow them in Iowa.  Everyone knows how we build automobiles.  To grow automobiles, we first grow the raw material from which they ...


June 17, 2013, 8:04 am, 1108682

To add to the fire Jazz and Steve have kindled, YOY inflation is at its lowest level historically according to the BEA and Next New Deal blog. It does not look like we need austerity policies and a little fiscal fire might put people back to work and stir the ...


June 17, 2013, 7:34 am, 1108679

The dumb money is learning it's dumb and is taking steps toward becoming really smart. But if they become smarter, that will create more opportunities for the "smart" people to become even smarter, making the dumb people relatively dumber. Again.

Got it?


June 17, 2013, 7:34 am, 1108678

I excerpted him here.

BBC News[!] provides a pretty good answer: "10 Reasons Why So Many People Are Moving to Texas".

Bonus: "17 Reasons Why Houston is the Best City in America".


June 17, 2013, 7:34 am, 1108677

Well, it's not really "versus" because Mr. Mauldin doesn't provide the full text of John Seater's comments. It's understandable that he didn't want to copy into his column what I'd guess was were lengthy comments, but he should have posted them on his website and provided readers with ...


June 17, 2013, 7:34 am, 1108676

Shale oil.

Oil and gas in general.

Solar.

Most interesting of all: guess who's having second thoughts about nuclear?


June 17, 2013, 7:34 am, 1108675

Monaco has an unfair advantage in recruiting top soccer talent: players move to avoid high taxes.

So do corporations.

And so are--soon probably a lot more will--Americans. (Bonus follow-on to that link: "Midland Ain't Pretty, But It Works".)


June 17, 2013, 7:23 am, 1108674

You would think that this poll showing "Americans' confidence ...


June 17, 2013, 7:04 am, 1108635

As expected, the 20 day moving average of the change in the growth rate of S&P 500 stock prices topped and fell back toward the level where the year over year change in the growth rate of the S&P 500's dividends per share expected ...


June 17, 2013, 6:46 am, 1108634


June 17, 2013, 6:44 am, 1108633

Dan Pallotta, Chief Humanity Officer of Advertising for Humanity and author of Uncharitable talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the ideas in his book. Pallotta argues that charities are deeply handicapped by their culture and how we view them. The use of overhead as ...


June 17, 2013, 6:36 am, 1108632

Economic news in recent months has been somewhat mixed, but the broad trend continues to look encouraging. The May profile of the economy, using the numbers published so far, shows few signs of stress, based on today’s update of The Capital Spectator's Economic Trend Index (ETI) and Economic Momentum Index ...


June 17, 2013, 4:35 am, 1108591

Welcome to the Counterparties email. The sign-up page is here, it’s just a matter of checking a box if you’re already registered on the Reuters website. Send suggestions, story tips and complaints to Counterparties.Reuters@gmail.com.

Good news for America’s unpaid army of latte-fetchers and lunch-order-takers! A Federal district ...


June 17, 2013, 4:35 am, 1108590

I went to two conferences in the past couple of weeks: the Underbanked Financial Services Forum, in Miami, and the Clinton Global Initiative’s America conference, in Chicago. At the former, I was introduced to a company called Cognical, which pitched itself as a tool which will allow lenders to ...


June 17, 2013, 3:34 am, 1108588
As most of you know, I lost my wife Joanne on May 16 last year to ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease. We were happily married for 27 years.

Joanne's three closest friends, Kathy, Marybeth, and Debbie all wanted me to move on, have fun, meet someone and enjoy life.


June 17, 2013, 3:03 am, 1108573

June 17, 2013, 3:03 am, 1108572

Why are we so worried about highly uncertain budget projections extending decades into the future when we have very real problems such as high levels of unemployment that need our immediate attention?

Fight the Future, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Last week the International Monetary Fund, whose normal role ...


June 17, 2013, 2:35 am, 1108570

Welcome to the Counterparties email. The sign-up page is here, it’s just a matter of checking a box if you’re already registered on the Reuters website. Send suggestions, story tips and complaints to Counterparties.Reuters@gmail.com.

Good news for America’s unpaid army of latte-fetchers and lunch-order-takers! A Federal district ...


June 17, 2013, 2:04 am, 1108568
(June 17, 2013 01:00 AM, by Alberto Mingardi) Is the Chinese blend of capitalism, communism, and mercantilism an alternative to Western "democratic capitalism"? Author and economist Dambisa Moyo argues so in a recent TED talk, suggesting that Western countries (which means, first and foremost, the United States) need... (0 COMMENTS)


June 17, 2013, 2:04 am, 1108567
(June 17, 2013 02:22 AM, by Bryan Caplan) In the Game of Thrones series, people use the term "bastard" literally. If your parents weren't married when you were born, you're a bastard. While bastards are common in Westeros, everyone looks down on them for the crime of existing.... (0 COMMENTS)


June 17, 2013, 1:34 am, 1108566
My friend "Lefteris" reports ..

Greece decided that all tax returns will be filed electronically.

Great! There is no more standing in line at the tax office to file your tax return. This is probably a problem for some older folks, but arguably it's a step in the ...


June 17, 2013, 1:33 am, 1108565
The marriage market might work better if men were more flexible about changing gender roles and more willing to help out with family care, an economist writes.


June 17, 2013, 12:35 am, 1108559

Why be libertarian, anyway? Why engage in a deep and lifelong commitment to the principle and the goal of individual liberty? For such a commitment, in our largely unfree world, means inevitably a radical disagreement with, and alienation from, the status quo, an ...