Many commentators have noted in recent years that Americans have been leaving the labor force. Their departure has made interpretation of unemployment statistics more difficult, and because the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes six variants of the unemployment rate,
As the most widely reported rate of unemployment (U-3) has fallen in recent months, people with a political agenda served by painting a rosy picture of the recovery have made considerable noise about this decrease. Their political opponents have responded
After the headline rate of unemployment (U-3) reached 8.5 percent in December 2011 ( the most recent month reported), some commentators began to talk as if the employment situation is now improving rapidly. Some have gone on to suggest that
Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, recently created a media flap when she said: There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you!
From time immemorial—from Etienne de la Boitie to David Hume to Ludwig von Mises—political analysts have noted that because the number of those in the ruling elite amounts to only a small fraction of the number in the ruled masses,
About a month ago, I posted in regard to what I called “the euthanasia of the saver.” This comment had to do with the fact that nominal interest rates in the United States for financial investments such as bank certificates
When I introduced the concept of regime uncertainty in 1997, attempting to improve our understanding of the Great Depression’s extraordinary duration, I anticipated that many people—especially my fellow economists—would not welcome this contribution. Their primary objection, I ventured, would be
Commentators and pundits, some of whom ought to know better, continue to harp on the idea that the recession persists because consumers are not spending. Every Keynesian seems to believe that because consumers are in a dreadful funk, only government
Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there was a country famous for its apples. In fact, it produced nothing but apples and so was called Appleonia. The people ate many apples in many different ways: raw
Someone must have imagined that my hopes for improved economic understanding might be excessively optimistic and thus needed to be curbed to restore my normal emotional balance, because that person undertook to smash any such hopes to dust by e-mailing
For weeks, we have been treated to comic opera in D.C.’s theater of the politically and economically absurd. On the stage, the actors–President Obama, the Secretary of the Treasury, congressional leaders–hop about, shouting moronic lines about the national “default” that
For thousands of years, philosophers have told us that if we are to live our lives at their best, we should seek truth, beauty, and goodness. Of course, each of these qualities has raised thorny issues and provoked ongoing arguments.
Despite the astonishing flood of more than a trillion dollars in new commercial-bank reserves that the Fed created in late 2008 and early 2009, when it undertook to rescue the big banks and other institutions from the consequences of their
If any one thing estimated in the Commerce Department’s National Income and Product Accounts may be described as the engine of economic growth, private domestic business net investment is that thing. This variable has such tremendous importance because, if accurately
The Great Depression has been a deeply contested subject from the very beginning. After John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory became sacred writ for most mainstream economists, Keynesian interpretations generally prevailed, notwithstanding pockets of resistance among older economists, in general, and
Consider the following commentary on the economic situation: Foolhardy procedures which are divorced from economic realities, or whose economic implications are not understood by their promoters, do not perforce become sanctified and wise merely by designating them as “action”; tilting
A funny thing happened on the way to the voting booth: Americans discovered that most federal “stimulus” funds were being used to stimulate government, not the economy. I was on the road recently, driving from my home in southeast Louisiana
Writing for CNBC’s “Behind the Money,” John Melloy describes the findings of a recent survey of investors: Institutional investors fear a government policy mistake far more than inflation, terrorism, a housing double dip, a weak dollar, poor earnings or any
President Obama has asked Congress for an additional $50 billion in “stimulus” money to finance infrastructure projects. The theory is that the additional spending will cause businesses to boost production to meet this demand. Producers will add jobs, triggering increases
Private saving and investment are the heart and soul of the dynamic market process. Together they provide and allocate the resources used to augment the economy’s productive capacity, generate sustained long-run economic growth, and thereby make possible a rising level
Each summer, Wall Street strategist Byron Wien convenes a meeting of high rollers to discuss the outlook for investment. This year’s meeting brought together fifty individuals, including more than ten billionaires. Their expectations, as reported by CNBC, are gloomy: “They
It must be a condition of employment that a journalist who writes about the current recession include in his article the statement, “consumption makes up more than two-thirds of the economy” or “consumption spending accounts for 70 percent of GDP.”
On August 24, I posted some data and analysis on yield curves for high-grade corporate bonds since the beginning of 2008, seeking to determine whether changes in these curves are consistent with the hypothesis that the current economic crisis has
Regime uncertainty has gained increasing recognition as the current economic troubles have persisted with little or no improvement since the economy reached a cyclical trough early in 2009. As described in my 1997 paper, regime uncertainty pertains to the likelihood
I pose this question seriously, not as a physiologist, but as an economic historian. I am provoked to raise the question by an advertisement that Amazon sent me recently, calling my attention a book titled Can Capitalism Survive? Creative Destruction
With great sadness, I convey the news I have just received that Manuel F. Ayau has died. Known to his friends as Muso, Ayau was one of the greatest persons I have had the privilege to know. I am not
Angelo M. Codevilla, professor emeritus of international relations at Boston University, has written an extraordinary essay for the July/August issue of The American Spectator. It’s called “America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution,” but it deals much more
If President Obama’s Oval Office speech made one thing clear, it is that his administration and the activists who back it view the Gulf oil spill as simply an opportunity to advance their pre-existing agenda–which has nothing to do with
Some people have always occupied themselves in crying out that the end is near. This sort of thing has been going on for millennia. But lately, it seems to me, the volume of such doom-saying has risen markedly. Websites that
Since the early twentieth century, periods of real or perceived national emergency have been “critical episodes” in the growth of government’s size, scope, and power in the United States and in many other countries. Hence, the concise conceptualization: Crisis and
Speaking to CNBC in Las Vegas recently, Steve Wynn, the billionaire developer and operator of entertainment properties, said: “Washington is unpredictable these days. No one has any idea what’s next . . . the uncertainty of the business climate in
The current recession and, especially, the related financial panic in the fall of 2008 have given rise to an extraordinary surge in the U.S. government’s size, scope, and power. As I write, the financial panic has subsided, but the recession,
The health care legislation recently bulldozed through Congress is only the tip of the iceberg. With some 2,400 pages of dense legalese–with thousands of additional pages of regulations implementing the legislation still to be written–this huge statute puts government in