Eurobanks: The Probable Point of Failure as Systemic Stress Rises
Why Eurobanks are the most likely fracture point if current economic stresses continue.
Read more...Category Archives: Dubious statistics
Dean Baker Exposes How CBO Cooks Inflation Forecasts to Promote Deficit Scaremongering
Yet more funny forecasts from the CBO telling you why you can’t have nice things, like a better job market.
Read more...Bill Black: The AEI and Brookings Sell Marriage as the Solution for Poverty
Marriage is the new cheap fix for poverty…which means by implication that single low income women are a new category of the undeserving poor.
Read more...Stock Market Investors Abandon Private Equity, Expect No Profits Overall From Current Deals
Equity investors think private equity funds will show no profits on their current deals, which contrasts sharply with portfolio company valuations.
Read more...Tom Engelhardt: The U.S. Military Bombs in the Twenty-First Century
The US military is not exceptional, save in sheer scale. It’s bad enough that the public is repeatedly told otherwise, but worse, the officialdom has fallen for its own PR.
Read more...Bill Black: How Many Lies Can the WSJ Pack into a Chart on Liar’s Loans?
Bill Black is not happy about the revisionist history on liar’s loans. And separately, this piece is a useful exercise in the critical reading of narratives.
Read more...Explaining Why Federal Deficits Are Needed
Why you should expect and applaud federal deficits.
Read more...Central Counterparties: The New Locus of Systemic Risk?
Central counterparties, also known as central clearinghouses, were supposed to reduce systemic risk. That story is not playing out according to its script.
Read more...Chinese Slowdown and the World Economy
China’s slowdown started years ago, not last year. And the impact on the US is likely to be lower than news reports would lead you to believe.
Read more...Flint: Let Them Drink Pollution?
Why the crisis in Flint, Michigan is about race and class, and the American nightmare of metastasizing inequality of wealth and power.
Read more...Are Economists in Denial About What’s Driving the Inequality Trainwreck?
Today’s richest Americans may soon blow past the tycoons of the Roaring Twenties.
Read more...Andrew Bacevich: Six National Security Questions Hillary, Donald, Ted, Marco, etc., Don’t Want to Answer and Won’t Even Be Asked
In the realm of national security, election 2016 promises to be not just a missed opportunity but a complete bust.
Read more...Former BIS Chief Economist Warns of Massive Debt Defaults, Need for Debt Jubilee; Fingers Europe as First in Line
Even though the former chief economist of the BIS calls for a debt jubilee, it’s only part of the medicine needed to get the economy out of the ditch.
Read more...Lost in Assumptions: Assessing the Economic Impact of Migrants
Yves here. This post is more important than it seems for several reasons. First, it reveals one of the dirty secrets of modeling: if you tweak assumptions within plausible ranges, you can come up with wildly different outcomes. Second, it identifies what some of these assumptions are in the now-hot-topic of whether letting more migrants […]
Read more...How Corporations and Politicians Lie With Numbers — and How Not to Be Fooled
Some of the most commonly-used “lying with figures” tricks and how to learn to recognize them.
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