My favorite man of letters and prolific letter writer, Don Boudreaux, usually tells it like it is as he does in this letter to PBS economics reported Paul Solman. The middle-class is NOT shrinking. PBS is nothing if not a leading proponent of what passes for mainstream economics. Enjoy this letter. [...]
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Krugman-in-Wonderland Perhaps the most constant theme in Paul Krugman’s recent columns has been his unwavering belief that the only way out of this depression is for governments to borrow and spend, and for central banks to inflate. He continues to beat the old drum that (1) there is not enough regulation of business, (2) [...] It has been the position of the Daily Capitalist that we really haven’t seen the end of the Great Recession, and one important measure of that, perhaps the one that really matters the most, is that unemployment remains high. It is therefore interesting to read in the New York Times (thank you, DoctoRx) that others [...] It seems as if much of the media forgot this statistics today: “Jobless claims jumped 11,000 in the September 10 week to an unexpectedly high 428,000.” Last week’s number was to 417,000, or 3,000 higher. [A] look at the four-week average isn’t encouraging, up 4,000 to 419,500 for the fourth straight gain [...] I follow Rick Davis’s data from Consumer Metrics Institute and he has come out with several interesting (and proprietary) ways to analyze the economy by measuring consumer data. His latest report shows a continuing “contraction” in consumer data. He describes it as follows: “Contraction Watch” follows [our] Daily Growth Index and compares it on a [...] It’s past time for beta blockers rather than stimulants for the economy, based on the following analogy. Let’s take Ben Bernanke as the doctor on the case of the U. S. economy, having succeeded Alan Greenspan while the mid-decade “boom” was beginning to arise from the tech wreck of 2000-2002. Let’s further posit that Dr. [...] The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) came out with a positive employment report for March, 2011, but the growth, while encouraging, is tenuous at best. There are still 13.5 million people unemployed in America. Here are the headline numbers from Econoday: The 8.8% unemployment rate is the lowest since March, 2009. Private employment was actually [...] Someone has to stop the Fed before it crushes what remains of America’s main street economy. Last Friday morning alone it launched two more financial sector pumping operations which will harm the real economy, even as these actions juice Wall Street’s speculative humors. First, joining the central banking cartels’ market rigging operation in support of [...] I tend to believe the BLS unemployment numbers in that they indicate marginal gains in employment, although they are probably statistically insignificant. Last Friday’s report said that the civilian unemployment rate declined to 8.9% from 9.0%. According the the BLS: The number of unemployed persons (13.7 million) and the unemployment rate (8.9 percent) changed little in February. The [...] |
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