Political Economy category archive
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
Foreclosures feed the market in my area:
Gotta make those sales.
Responsible Fiscals 0
Jamelle Boule comments briefly and incisively on the backwards nature of the budget debate.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Not good, not terrible.
More at the link.
Just Because Someone Says It Don’t Mean It’s Worth a Listen 0
Paul Krugman on the phony balance of “on-one-hand-on-the-other-hand” (emphasis added):
Via Bob Cesca.
86 Recession Proofs 0
At least one industry is doing okay.
Its shares jumped 7 percent in morning trading.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go, Special Friday Edition 0
Slight cause for hope from the monthly February figures:
The increase in payrolls partly reflected a return to more seasonable weather and followed a 63,000 gain in January, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of economists was for an addition of 196,000 jobs last month.
Meanwhile, in the world of No Mountebank Too High No Lie Too Big, Republicans claim credit, even as they blackmail the polity with layoffs.
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Society 0
Just down the road a piece in Suffolk:
Overall, taxable property shrank in value from $9.04 billion to $8.84 billion. It’s the third consecutive year assessments have declined.
I believe that, on Wall Street, this is known as creating value–or some such mumbo jumbo for making the rich richer and the poor poorer.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
The short-term weekly figures getting a little better. (Link fixed.)
Among the reasons for increased optimism about the labor market in coming months has been a recent drop in initial claims, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told lawmakers this week. Companies added 200,000 jobs in February, while unemployment rose to 9.1 percent, economists project a Labor Department report to show tomorrow.
(snip)
The four-week moving average, a less volatile measure, dropped to 388,500, the lowest since the week ended July 12, 2008, from 401,250 last week. It was also the first time the monthly average has been below 400,000 since July 2008.
The number of people continuing to collect jobless benefits unexpectedly decreased by 59,000 in the week ended Feb. 19 to 3.77 million.
Economic Ignorance 0
Writing at the Guardian, Anya Schiffrin considers why business news fails to inform. One possible reason: focusing on the small picture:
Never Quit 0
Remember all those happy-looking retirees in those bathtubs on the telly vision?
They are working actors, probably getting paid minimum scale:
Read the whole thing, especially the part about why the move to 401k’s turned out to be a scam and a fraud has failed the holders of 401k-based retirement plans.
Quality Construction at a Price That’s Fright 0
This is the type of entitlemennt spending that needs re-examined.
In October, after spending more than $40 million on repairs, the Navy announced that the San Antonio wouldn’t be ready to deploy in the spring with the rest of its amphibious group, and another ship was named to take its place.
While the service has insisted with each setback that the San Antonio eventually will live up to its promises, there has been little to report in the way of progress, because each time crews have come close to fixing one major defect, more have cropped up. Many defects have extended to later ships in the class, though to lesser degrees.
The price tag for taxpayers has been enormous. Delivered several hundred million dollars over budget, the San Antonio has cost nearly $2 billion.
Lots of details at the link,
Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0
Keeping home prices within reach (of the moneyed minority):
A “bloated supply of foreclosures and weak demand from homebuyers” are depressing the market, James J. Saccacio, RealtyTrac’s chief executive officer, said in the statement. Residential real-estate prices dropped 4.1 percent in the fourth quarter from a year a earlier, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index of home values in 20 cities.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Trickle Down 0
You can look at this chart to see what is trickling down:
More charts at Mother Jones.
Via Michael Tomasky.
Correlation 0
Shaun Mullen finds some interesting statistics. Follow the link to see what conclusions they lead him to.
South Carolina — 50th
North Carolina — 49th
Georgia — 48th
Texas 47th
Virginia — 44thGot that? Meanwhile, the states with the highest ACT/SAT rankings all allow collective bargaining:
Iowa — 1st
Minnesota and Wisconsin — 2nd
Kansas — 4th
Nebraska — 5thStatistics can lie, but these are unambiguous. States that allow teachers to bargain produce better students, and by inference better teachers.
The Rewards of Incompetence . . . 0
. . . are nil.
Dean Baker, writing at the Guardian, points out that many of those who today crusade against the growing deficit are the same folks who championed the policies of that led to the housing crash, which in turn led to . . . the growing deficit.
A nugget:
Now that we are experiencing an economic disaster – 25 million people unemployed or underemployed, millions of people facing the loss of their homes, more than 10 million underwater with their mortgages – as a direct result of their incompetence, these same people are telling us again about the urgent need to cut social security and Medicare. The deficit hawks somehow think that their case is more compelling because of the damage done by their incompetence.
It should not work this way. In most lines of work, incompetence is not a credential; it should not be one in designing economic policy either.