Explaining Why Federal Deficits Are Needed
Why you should expect and applaud federal deficits.
Read more...Category Archives: Dubious statistics
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.
Read more...Why is CalPERS Understating Its Cost of Investing in Private Equity by Roughly $1.6 Billion, Meaning 80%?
CalPERS keeps putting its hand in the buzzsaw by presenting misleading or outright false information about private equity fees and costs.
Read more...What’s Your Threat Score?
Pre-crime has arrived.
Read more...How the Labor Cost Competitiveness Myth is Making the Eurozone Crisis Worse
A new article makes a devastating attack on a fundamental belief driving Eurozone policy, that the member economies need to be made more “competitive,” meaning labor needs to be squeezed, for the currency union to achieve more growth.
Read more...China’s Contradictory Aims, Greater International Role Versus Domestic Economic Control, HIt Breaking Point
China appears to be in denial that it can’t have more open financial markets and maintain the same degree of control over the economy that it once enjoyed.
Read more...Another Slow Year for the Global Economy
The factors that dragged down the global economy in 2015 will persist – and in some cases worsen – in the new year.
Read more...Deflation Denialism: No, Chancellor, 0.5% Inflation is Not “Welcome News”
What is deflation? What has caused inflation to fall? And why is there no such thing as ‘good deflation’?
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