According Robert Cringely at PBS, IBM is cutting at least 150,000 US jobs in its Global Services Division, and each US worker is to be replaced by a new overseas hire. This headcount cut, called Project Lean, bears out the populist view that corporate executives are greedy and outsourcing damages the American economy. As we […]
Read more...Interestingly, after a some robust debate among Serious Economists at Mark Thoma’s blog, Economist’s View, on the merits of trade (even Krugman contributed via e-mail), a study taking the opposite view appears at Economic Policy Institute. The study argues that millions of jobs have been lost to China. Its methodology looks reasonable. Mark Thoma was […]
Read more...The debate among some serious academics on the economic models, their merits, and what they say about who might win or lose from trade continued over the weekend. While informative, it was also oriented heavily towards theory. Dani Rodrik tries to sum up: Can we all agree on these? 1.Trade policy works through its effect […]
Read more...Australian economist John Quiggin posted a high level event chart of the how Seriously Bad scenarios might play themselves out (from a talk by sustainability expert Chris Moran) and what the policy response might be. It includes probability estimates from 80 students. However, as the chart shows, the rational calculus doesn’t bode well for forestalling […]
Read more...There is quiet distress within the Democratic Party that the need to rein in the burgeoning Bush deficits will severely limit their ability to tackle issues near and dear to their heart, such as health care. As Mark Thoma reports in “Democrats and Deficits,” citing Brad Plumer of the New Republic and Greg Anrig, Nobel […]
Read more...Alan Reynolds has become income inequality’s analogue to a global warming denier. Even after Fed chairman Ben Bernanke and President Bush have acknowledged that income disparity has increased, Reynolds is still fighting a rearguard action. He wrote a series of articles, starting with a Wall Street Journal comment last December, arguing against the widely-cited finding […]
Read more...The Financial Times reports today on a report prepared by 11 retired US admirals and generals on the security implications of global warming. The authors concluded that global warming would worsen regional conflicts, worsen living standards, and undermine stability. These findings are consistent with earlier reports that discussed the large-scale dislocation that would result from […]
Read more...Although it hasn’t gotten much attention in the business press yet, the House Financial Services Committee is on the warpath to clean up subprime mortgage lending. Most of their ideas, such as tighter regulation of mortgage brokers, strike observers as reasonable. But one has created a great deal of alarm. The concept is “assignee liability,” […]
Read more...So far, it hasn’t gotten much attention in the mainstream business press, but Bloomberg and the Financial Times are very much on top of the story: the House Financial Services Committee is moving forward with proposals to impose new regulations on subprime lending. And Democrats and Republicans are largely on the same page. There are […]
Read more...Dean Baker of the Center for Economic Policy and Progress has focused on the issue of productivity, both in the current business cycle (he sees its decline as an underreported negative indicator) and longer term. A post on his blog Beat the Press points to a recent paper of his on productivity and reaches some […]
Read more...It’s become such an article of faith that the private sector is better than the government at doing just about everything that those who want the government to take a more active role here and there are put on the defensive. But the using the private sector to promote public goals can be more costly […]
Read more...As we’ve discussed, in the UK there is a move afoot to include the concept of wellbeing in public policy debates. The Brits have recognized that alienation and anomie are on the rise and are willing to discuss whether government can be part of the solution, or at least not part of the problem. While […]
Read more...A Ministry of Defense team has been envisioning what the world might look like in 30 years (as an aside, no one in the private sector takes such a long view), and what it sees is not pretty. Terrorism will remain an ongoing threat, with intermittent, possibly coordinated attacks of greater intensity than now. Other […]
Read more...A post at Free Exchange, the Economist’s blog, which quotes and elaborates on one by Tyler Cowen, posits that Europeans are better at government because they have more homogeneous societies and talent pools, and therefore Europeans choose to consume more government. Americans are better at things like private sector innovation, and therefore its population demands […]
Read more...Paul Krugman’s current offering in the New York Times, “Distract and Disenfranchise,” seeks to connect the dots between the Bush Administration’s very successful (until recently) fear-mongering, voter disenfranchisement, and income inequality. He argues that the fact that the Republicans are captive to interests that won’t permit them to address income inequality requires that they make […]
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