A paradox arises to the extent that it is true that the market is dependent on normative underpinning (to provide the pre-contractural foundations such as trust, cooperation, and honesty) which all contractural relations require: The more people accept the neoclasical paradigm as a guide for their behavior, the more the ability to sustain a market […]
Read more...Submitted by Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns. This morning I was reading Simon Johnson’s excellent post “President Obama’s Regulatory Reforms Announcement: A Viewer’s Guide” about what Barack Obama should say when he makes his regulatory reform pitch today at 12:30 PM. I agree with what he has to say about the need to re-assure us […]
Read more...Submitted by Edward Harrison of the site Credit Writedowns. The chain of events whereby easy money leads to malinvestment that impoverishes a society is now fully manifest in the United States. You remember Victorville, CA where new homes were being demolished because it cost more to maintain them than to demolish them? (see post here) […]
Read more...Submitted by Edward Harrison of the site Credit Writedowns. A recent post I published on both Credit Writedowns and Naked Capitalism, “Both initial claims and continuing claims now pointing to recovery,” has left the impression that I am a wild-eyed bull – for which I have been duly smacked about the head. This is far […]
Read more...Submitted by Edward Harrison of the site Credit Writedowns. As with my most recent post here on Naked Capitalism about Larry Summers, I want to write a thought piece here, as much for discussion’s sake as for its analysis. Now, the core of what you are about to read is something I put together and […]
Read more...Literature is rife with quotes and vignettes illustrating the gulf between the rich and everyone else. And those quips generally take class differences as a given. Far more interesting and corrosive are the anecdotes that seek to get the public to accept status differences when the basis for them is shaky indeed. One of my […]
Read more...Not only are customers reducing their food expenditures, but some food retailers believe that they are actually buying less food, not merely cheaper edibles. Observers believe that shoppers are being less wasteful. From the Independent: Food sales in Britain have fallen for the first time in more than 20 years, as customers tighten their belts. […]
Read more...Economic Policy Institute discusses a troubling pattern. Historically, when the economy went south, a larger proportion of workers retired early. It isn’t clear whether they were offered packages, were sacked, or left for other reasons (say their job was redefined and they no longer enjoyed it), but the point is they left the workforce. Now […]
Read more...A disheartening post from the Economic Policy Institute on the employment outlook for the class of 2008. This weak market, which appears unlikely to improve much for the 2009 cohort, raises troubling issues. Much of the sense of disillusionment in America is coming from the fact that elements of our collective social beliefs are being […]
Read more...Why is it that some ideas capture the popular imagination and others die on the vine? A lot has to do with timing, getting noticed by opinion leaders, having a pithy turn of phrase. Yet I’ve seen articles and books that (at least to me) make fundamentally important observations and go nowhere, and others which […]
Read more...A New York Times story discusses a new manifestation of housing stress, namely, that people who have euphemistically had to downsize their housing are inceasingly unable to keep up with the storage charges and are having their possessions auctioned off. It would be nice if we could all emulate Buddhists and take such reversals with […]
Read more...It’s no surprise to anyone in America that being middle class isn’t what it used to be. Even though we have more gadgets, middle class workers in the 1950s and 1960s could afford to have stay-at-home wives. For mort households, it takes more hours of paid labor, and more borrowing, to support a bourgeois lifestyle. […]
Read more...The New York Times has an odd story today, “Is a Lean Economy Turning Mean?” which discusses how conditions for workers have become dire. New jobs are scarce, and many of the ones out there don’t pay as well as what employees got in previous roles. Hello, downward mobility. What makes the piece peculiar is […]
Read more...Economist Thomas Palley has of late been discussing what he believes to be an insufficiently-acknowledged cause of our current financial woes, namely, a shift in government policy away from emphasizing wage growth as a key objective. Another shift was a lack of concern about trade deficits. Now one can argue that combatting trade deficits means […]
Read more...Harvard economics professor Edward Glaeser reviewed a new book, “Bad Samaritans” by Ha-Joon Chang in the New York Sun (hat tip Mark Thoma). Glaesar focuses on his objections to the book, but nevertheless concedes, Readers who believe in free trade will not find much in Mr. Chang that challenges that belief, but the book is […]
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