Wolf Richter: This Chart Truly Depicts a New, Terrible Trend in Jobs Mess
As Oregoncharles put it, in terms of labor force participation, “Obama has now cancelled out the entire effect of the Women’s Movement.”
Read more...Category Archives: Economic fundamentals
Who Needs Balanced Trade? Who Needs Balanced Budgets?
Who needs balanced trade? It’s time to challenge the premises of “trade” deals like the TransPacific Partnership.
Read more...Frances Coppola: The Great Yield Divergence
Puzzling over the Great Divergence of real and nominal yields. Ever since the Great Depression, nominal yields have been persistently above real yields Yet in the previous 200 years, despite periods of fiat currency and high inflation, real and nominal yields didn’t diverge. Why do they now?
Read more...Greece: No Lessons Learned
Greece, which has undertaken the most severe austerity, has experienced the deepest economic contraction. But the policy quackery continues.
Read more...Are the Affluenza Getting Nervous?
Is nervousness and an apparent spending pullback limited to New York City affluenza, or do readers see a change in mood in their communities?
Read more...Nicholas Shaxson: Why a ‘Competitive’ Economy Means Less Competition
Nicholas Shaxson explains how a “Competitiveness Agenda” is being used to set industrial policies that favor the creation of what used to be called “national champions,” as in Really Big Companies. Never mind that neoliberals officially oppose anything so interventionist as industrial policy….
Read more...Contemporary Capitalism: Neoliberal Capitalism, Financialized Capitalism, or Globalized Capitalism?
Why “neoliberal” is the framework that best describes our new, post 1980 form of capitalism.
Read more...Frances Coppola: Rethinking Government Debt and Monetary Sovereignity
Debunking the uniformed and regularly hysterical mainstream treatment of government debt and deficits.
Read more...More Proof That Economic Policies Have Failed Workers: Median Real Incomes Stagnant for Last Two Decades
Sometimes one chart really does tell you what you need to know.
Read more...Chris Hedges and Leo Panitch: We are All Greeks Now
Leo Panitch and Chris Hedges discuss how nature of imperialism today is financial power.
Read more...Low Unemployment with Falling Capacity Utilization… Not a Good Sign for Fed Liftoff
Why the Fed should delay its long-anticipated “liftoff”.
Read more...Corbynomics 101: A Guide to People’s QE (PQE)
Why the three big charges commonly made against Corbyn’s “People’s Quantitative Easing” or PQE, are all wet.
Read more...Credit Rating Agencies and Brazil: S&P as Neoliberal Enforcer
Mind you, the rating agencies are far from the only neoliberal enforcers as far as emerging economies are concerned. But it is nevertheless instructive to compare an official rationale with data.
Read more...Cereals, Appropriability, and Hierarchy
Conventional theory suggests that hierarchy and state institutions emerged due to increased productivity following the Neolithic transition to farming. This column argues that these social developments were a result of an increase in the ability of both robbers and the emergent elite to appropriate crops. Hierarchy and state institutions developed, therefore, only in regions where appropriable cereal crops had sufficient productivity advantage over non-appropriable roots and tubers.
Read more...Nomi Prins: Mexico, Federal Reserve Policy and Danger Ahead for Emerging Markets
Mexico’s problems could again ripple through Latin America where eroding confidence, volatility, and US dollar strength are already hurting economies and markets.
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