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Still A Weak Labor Market
Calculated Risk explains that while ‘layoffs and discharges have declined sharply from early 2009′, hiring is still low–’another indicator of a weak labor market’.
[Reader note: Net job growth occurs when Hires is above Total Separations]
Popularity: 1% [?]
The Chicago Boys’ Legacy In Chile?
Salon’s Andrew Leonard compiles a few accounts that link the neoliberal economic policies the Milton Friedman set advised Pinochet to implement and the structures that did fall in the Chilean earthquake a couple of days back. One of them, a professor of architecture in Santiago, reflects:
Saddened as I am by the loss of life and landmarks, I am scandalized by the few modern structures that crumbled, those spectacular exceptions you keep seeing on the TV news. The economic bonanza and development frenzy of the last decades have clearly allowed a degree of relaxation of the proud building standards of this country. That’s likely why some new urban highway overpasses, built by private companies with government concessions, are now rubble. It’s a sobering lesson for the neoliberalism favored for the past 35 years, and a huge economic and cultural setback for the country.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Russia’s Discrete Economies
Stratfor has an exceptionally edifying portrait of the Russian economy, its geopolitical power, and so forth. Chris Bodenner at the Daily Dish drew attention to its cool explanation of how geography shapes economies:
Lauren Goodrich and Peter Zeihan compare the vast, interconnected river system of the US to the large but sparse and isolated rivers of Russia:
So while geography handed the United States the perfect transport network free of charge, Russia has had to use every available kopek to link its country together with an expensive road, rail and canal network.One of the many side effects of this geography situation is that the United States had extra capital that it could dedicate to finance in a relatively democratic manner, while Russia’s chronic capital deficit prompted it to concentrate what little capital resources it had into a single set of hands
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Popularity: 1% [?]
Graph Of The Day
EPI’s Josh Bivens via Megan McArdle:
In a podcast with The Nation’s Chris Hayes, Bivens explains how we can measure the effect of the stimulus on disposable income and, indirectly, to consumption, which makes up between 60 and 70 percent of our GDP. If you look at personal income minus government transfers — this is a good proxy for how the private sector is doing at generating income growth without counting government assistance — that measure has fallen by 8 percent since the recession began. But disposable personal income — what people have the ability to actually spend, due to tax breaks and government transfer payments like unemployment insurance — is actually up one percent. One reason consumption hasn’t fallen off the cliff, he suggests, is that Recovery Act has
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Popularity: 1% [?]
At Once The Chef, The Server, And The Diner
John Sides of The Monkey Cage points out that three-fourths of what drives people’s trust in government is how well the economy is doing. And Matt Yglesias argues why this whopping statistic isn’t likely to be analyzed or even reported on by the political media:
One reason this kind of thing doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves, of course, is that it’s against the professional interests of the political operative class to admit that objective macroeconomic factors are what drives most political outcomes.
and notes a depressing example of how it can affect the political process:
[T]his once again highlights how insane it was of Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill to ignore Christina Romer when she said the economy needed
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Popularity: 1% [?]
