Posted on 14 January 2021

by Steve Keen, Patreon.com/Steve Keen

This post contains new information on Nordhaus’s distortion of Lenton et al.’s 2008 paper on tipping elements in the Earth’s climate, but is otherwise very similar to my recent paper in Globalizations. It is a chapter in a forthcoming Springer book.

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the premier international body collating the scientific assessment of climate change, and proposals for mitigation. A joint creation of the United Nations agencies the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), it brings together scientists from myriad disciplines to

Posted on 17 January 2021
by John Mauldin, Thoughts from the Frontline

This is part two of my 2021 forecast series. I began last week (you can read it here) discussing a three-handed alien race envisioned by science fiction writers Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven.Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.They had two regular hands and a third “gripping hand," which though less dexterous, was far stronger. My analogy was that the COVID-19 vaccine has us in the Gripping Hand. Any forecast for 2021 must first consider this decidedly “known unknown."Today we’ll begin by looking at new virus developments, some of which are good, some very good, and some frightening. We (the entire world) are in a very tight race with dire consequences

Posted on 14 January 2021
by Philip Pilkington

Neoclassicals are a slippery bunch indeed. The moment you think that you’ve pointed out a flaw in their theoretical armor they turn around and say that the theory can accommodate the criticism. Soon after, you see them once again making the same mistake you were pointing to. This leaves you mystified: are they liars or are they just stupid?Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.I’ve come to think that a great deal of this is down to neoclassicals not actually understanding what their theories mean. Much of the theoretical framework is mathematical and geometric but in order to be relevant for the discussion of economics such mathematics or geometry must be interpreted in an

Posted on 13 January 2021
by UPFINA

Article of the Week from UPFINAWe saw this negative jobs print from a mile away. It became clear a few weeks ago that the economy would lose jobs in December because the pandemic was shutting down businesses again. The good news is these job losses were temporary losses directly related to the shutdown rather than general economic weakness. That’s why our expectation for losses was so straightforward. If a restaurant is forced to close, the jobs will be gone. There’s not much of a prediction there.Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.The good news is November’s report was revised higher from 245,000 jobs created to 336,000 jobs created. That weak report hinted we might see losses in

Posted on 10 January 2021
by John Mauldin, Thoughts from the Frontline

This week’s letter is the first part of my 2021 forecast. There is simply too much to cover in one letter, and today we’ll start with the most important factor, a known unknown, that I think will be the driver for 2021.Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.Before beginning, I want to make two points, one about my personal investment position and one about recent events.First, when I read articles about myself, I’m usually called “bearish." I never know whether to be amused or mystified. If you looked at my portfolio, you would see I’m almost fully invested, not in gold and/or survival stocks but a full range of assets. I have fixed income and private credit

Posted on 09 January 2021
by Constantin Gurdgiev, TrueEconomics.Blogspot.in

U.S. Labor Markets Update Continued unemployment claims (based on seasonally-adjusted data) are continuing to decline, as the latest data through mid-December 2020 shows, yet, even with these news, the latest data print puts continued claims for unemployment at the levels comparable with late 2009. Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.Editor’s note: These charts do not reflect the December Employment Situation Report issued 08 January 2021, which saw unemployment again rising for the first time in 7 months with 140,000 jobs lost.So here is the chart showing overall levels of continued unemployment claims in the U.S.:And here is one of my "Scariest

Posted on 08 January 2021
by Constantin Gurdgiev, TrueEconomics.Blogspot.in

Sweden is commonly used as a shining example of ‘saving the economy’ by not ‘panicking’ into severe mobility restrictions. This argument is commonly used by the folks who tend to believe in sinister Big State conspiracies around other countries’ responses to the pandemic.Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.Sweden started the pandemic by openly pursuing the strategy targeting ‘herd immunity’. In this, the country approach to the pandemic containment was similar to that of the Netherlands. (See caption picture above for as example of typical Swedish behavior during the pandemic.) However, unlike Sweden, the Netherlands quickly reversed this approach

Posted on 08 January 2021
by Timothy Taylor, Conversable Economist

There are two things that "everyone knows" about the US middle class: it’s shrinking in size and the government isn’t helping. However, when one digs into the data, the evidence for these claims and some implications of that evidence are considerably more nuanced. Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.Here, I draw upon a collection of essays called Securing Our Economic Future, edited by Melissa S. Kearney and Amy Ganz, and published by the Aspen Institute Economic Strategy Group late last year. In h first essay, Bruce Sacerdote asks, "Is the Decline of the Middle Class Greatly Exaggerated?" In the second essay, Adam Looney, Jeff Larrimore, David Splinter look

Posted on 07 January 2021

by Philip Pilkington

Article of the Week from Fixing the Economists

Here I just want to lay out, to supplement my last post, a quick note on what seems to me an epistemological error in Marxist philosophy – one that results from an inability to follow dialectical logic to its conclusion and arises out of the skepticism and Unhappy Consciousness that results.

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I will not, as is typical, quote the passages in Hegel that discuss skepticism and the Unhappy Consciousness in the typical way but instead I will insert sentences where I see fit. For those interested they can be found here. I see no point in quoting them because Hegel’s thought cannot readily be

Posted on 05 January 2021
by Constantin Gurdgiev, TrueEconomics.Blogspot.in

In this post, let’s take a look at the latest COVID19 data for the U.S. compared to the EU27. Both populations have experienced large surges in the fourth quarter, but thgere are differnces which are detailed in what follows.Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.Weekly counts of new cases and deaths, illustrated above, suggest that:Since the start of the pandemic, the U.S. has experienced three waves, against the EU27’s two. The EU27’s 2nd wave of mew cases appears to have crested in week 45, while the U.S.’s current wave continued to rise through week 51 of 2020. Week 52 data is hard to interpret, as it represents poorer quality of data due to the

I am introducing new analysis for Europe and EU27 across the main metrics of the pandemic. All data reported and analysed here is as reoirted thriugh week 52 of 2020.Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.Europe is continuing to experience Wave 2 of the pandemic, while EU27 is on the abating part of the pandemic curve, albeit with some volatility to the upside, especially in weeks 49-51. The above data is yet to fully reflect the beginning of the new strand of the virus (commonly referenced to the UK as the country of origin, although this appears to be a questionable reference point).In terms of deaths, peak of the Wave 2 of the pandemic can now be timed to week 48, although in the last two weeks of 2020 there is some evidence

Posted on 03 January 2021
by Constantin Gurdgiev, TrueEconomics.Blogspot.in

Starting the new year of data analysis for Covid19 pandemic, I have re-configured the charts and my database to reflect changes in ECDC reporting from daily to weekly aggregates, as reported through Thursday each week. The result is smoother data series, allowing for clearer analysis of the key trends. The downside, of course, is the lags in data reporting.Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.Please, note for the future: weekly data is subject to revisions by the ECDC.First post of the new year: Worldwide figures and trends.As of the last week of 2020, worldwide cases of positive tests have reached 80,177,400, with seventh consecutive week of above 4

Universal fundamentals of population growth

Early in the SARS-2-CoV pandemic (Feb to Mar 2020), CoVid-19 infection rates in various European and Asian countries were doubling every two to ten days (see Nunes-Vaz, 2020). The wide spread in doubling times reflected the relative effectiveness of differing national control policies and population behaviours. Many of these nations managed to reverse the trend and ‘flatten the curve’, from several thousand to only a few hundred cases daily, by late May or June, a situation that obtained through the summer months. However, by early September 2020, the number of new daily CoVid-19 cases was again on the uptick. People were spending more time indoors at work, at play, at school, crowding together and more effectively transmitting the virus.

Posted on 31 December 2020
by Philip Pilkington

Hour-long, by hour, may we two stand When we’re dead, between these lands The sun set behind his eyes And Joe said, “Is this desire?" – PJ Harvey, ‘Is This Desire?‘ (Video end of article)Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.I’ll be honest: I hate discussing Marx, dialectical materialism and the Labour Theory of Value (hereafter: LTV). Why? Because it’s like discussing monetary theory with a hyperinflation obsessed Austrian; they don’t have enough grounding to have a discussion as they’ve only really read their side of the debate. Even those Marxists that have read Hegel come away with an understanding that is so deeply biased by Marx’s perversions of dialectical philosophy that

Posted on 28 December 2020
by Lance Roberts, Clarity Financial

In October, I discuss how the “2nd Derivative Effect" would mute the impact of future stimulus programs. With the passage of the $900 billion stimulus package, we can update the estimates for the economic impact heading into 2021.Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.While most hope more stimulus will cure the economy’s ills, the “2nd derivative effect" will be problematic. Of course, since vast portions of the stimulus package went to everything but “helping out the average American," such ensures the impact will be far less.Let me recap.Making Some AssumptionsAs the economy shut down due to the pandemic, the Federal Reserve flooded the system with liquidity in

Posted on 24 December 2020
by Philip Pilkington

Jan has brought my attention to the following paper which lays out a good outline of Gunnar Myrdal’s Monetary Equilibrium. Since many are unfamiliar with Myrdal’s theories in the English speaking world I will lay out what I think to be some of the most salient points here.Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.Tobon lays out a nice clear series of conditions that must be met for monetary equilibrium to occur in Wicksell’s theory:Or, in English:Wicksell’s monetary equilibrium is defined by three fundamental conditions: 1) the equality between the money interest rate im and the natural interest rate in, 2) the equality between investment I and savings S , and 3) the stability of the

Posted on 26 December 2020
from Voxeu.org

— this post authored by Barbara Baarsma, Eline van den Broek-Altenburg, Robin Fransman, Bas Jacobs, Carl Koopmans, and Coen TeulingsThe aim of the Dutch government’s current policy to combat COVID-19, as in many other countries, is to reduce the number of infections as much as possible. Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.This column argues that recent data show that societies can handle a much larger number of infections during this second wave without excessive social costs, and that the Dutch policy should therefore move away from almost eliminating infections towards creating herd immunity by letting the COVID-19-virus circulate more freely among the non-vulnerable groups, while

Posted on 22 December 2020
by Rick Davis, Consumer Metrics Institute

December 22, 2020 – BEA Revises Third Quarter 2020 GDP Growth Slightly Upward to 33.44%:In their third and final estimate of the US GDP for the third quarter of 2020, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that the US economy was growing at a +33.44% annual rate, up 0.37 percentage points (pp) from their previous estimate and up 64.83pp from the prior quarter.Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.As was the case with the previous estimate, none of the revisions are material. Once again the only minor adjustments worth mentioning were in consumer spending (up +0.22pp in aggregate, and fixed commercial investment (up +0.16pp).In an earlier release,

Posted on 17 December 2020

by Philip Pilkington

Article of the Week from Fixing the Economists

In my post on the Austrian Business Cycle Theory Jan, a regular commenter on Lord Keynes’ blog, once again brought up the Stockholm School of economics. He has been doing this on Lord Keynes’ blog for as long as I can remember and there has so far never been a proper discussion.

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What was the Stockholm School? They were a group of economists working in Sweden in the first half of the 20th century who, like Keynes, were followers of the Swedish economist Knut Wicksell who had expanded the latter’s theories to take into account shortfalls in aggregate demand. The two main figures were

Posted on 13 December 2020
by Constantin Gurdgiev, TrueEconomics.Blogspot.in

Despite making some serious inroads in reducing unemployment, U.S. labor markets are still half-alive and things are starting to look shaky. Continued unemployment claims are running below the 2008 GFC peak for the third week in a row, but …Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.Continued unemployment claims are running below the 2008 GFC peak for the third week in a row, but adjusting to pre-Covid19 cycle unemployment troughs, we are still ways to go:Despite making some serious inroads in reducing unemployment, U.S. labor markets are still half-alive and things are starting to look shaky:Latest weekly change in continued unemployment figures is an

Posted on 12 December 2020
by John Mauldin, Thoughts from the Frontline

The essential point to grasp is that in dealing with capitalism we are dealing with an evolutionary process… At the heart of capitalism is creative destruction.…Situations emerge in the process of creative destruction in which many firms may have to perish that nevertheless would be able to live on vigorously and usefully if they could weather a particular storm.- Joseph A. SchumpeterPlease share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.The most important feature of an information economy, in which information is defined as surprise, is the overthrow, not the attainment, of equilibrium. The science that we have come to know as information theory establishes the supremacy

Posted on 10 December 2020
by Philip Pilkington

This is a very quick note so as to weigh in on a debate which, frankly, I don’t really want to weigh in on. It relates to the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (hereafter: ABCT) and its relationship to the natural rate of interest. The natural rate of interest was discredited by Piero Sraffa in the 1920s when he pointed out that there were actually multiple own rates of interest depending on which commodity you took as a numeraire.Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.There have been many Austrian responses to try and iron this out – almost all of them imagine a range of financial market contracts, throw in some implicit “rational expectations" assumptions about how such contracts

Posted on 05 December 2020
by John Mauldin, Thoughts from the Frontline

Growing income and wealth inequality were on my (and probably your) radar screen long before COVID-19 came along. The pandemic has made them both more obvious and more urgent. The actions by the Federal Reserve have widened the gap. We are now in a situation where society’s upper echelon can easily stay safe and prosperous while the lower segments live precariously and dangerously.Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.It’s actually worse than that. The upper end is safe precisely because millions of “essential" workers are producing and delivering the goods we need, placing themselves at risk in the process. That’s always been the case to some degree. Now

Posted on 03 December 2020
by Philip Pilkington

Article of the Week from Fixing the EconomistsMany Post-Keynesians and other aspiring “new economic thinkers" have fooled themselves into believing that all economics has to do is mimic the scientific method more accurately. The historian of thought Philip Mirowski has published a very interesting piece entitled The Thirteen Commandments of Neoliberalism.Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.The first and most important point to comment on is the following:It is noteworthy that [Mont Pelerin Society] members began to explore the portrayal of the market as an evolutionary phenomenon long before biology displaced physics as the premier science in the modern world-picture. If the

Posted on 28 November 2020
by Timothy Taylor, Conversable Economist

As all of us who learn our US history from Broadway musicals know, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton disagreed on everything. But in the aftermath the US Revolutionary War, when George Washington had become the first US president, he asked Jefferson and Hamilton to work together in creating a plan to rescue the fisheries off the New England coast, which had suffered greatly during the Revolutionary War. (Pictured below is an Atlantic cod, Wikimedia Commons.)Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.Jefferson and Hamilton agreed on an incentive-based plan–although for distinctively different reasons. The result of their collaboration was February 1791

Posted on 29 November 2020
by John Mauldin, Thoughts from the Frontline

A Happy Thanksgiving weekend to all my US friends. This year was different for many of us – sometimes by choice, sometimes not. But there’s one bit of good news I think we can all share: The holiday season means 2020 is almost over. Soon, we’ll be able to turn the page.Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.Source: @my2cents_on via TwitterEach year at this time, I find myself recalling 2007, which was (so far) the most eventful Thanksgiving of my life. I told the story in my letter at the time, and today I am sharing it again. Interestingly, the lesson I drew from that harrowing experience once again applies. Indeed, the financial firetrucks are once again

Posted on 26 November 2020
by Lars P. Syll

In an issue of the journal Fronesis yours truly and a couple of other academics (e.g. Julie Nelson, Tony Lawson, and Phil Mirowski) made an effort at introducing its readers to heterodox economics and its critique of mainstream economics. Rather unsurprisingly this hasn’t pleased the Swedish economics establishment.Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.On the mainstream economics blog Ekonomistas, professor Daniel Waldenström rode out to defend the mainstream with the nowadays standard defence – heterodox critics haven’t understood that mainstream economics today has gone through a pluralist and empirical revolution. Since heterodox critics haven’t noticed that, their views on the

Posted on 26 November 2020
by Philip Pilkington

Article of the Week from Fixing the EconomistsAdam Curtis has a blog post which is as fantastic as usual. This one deals with intelligence services and how they are generally run by weirdos and idiots. This is something I’ve long been aware of personally – having been earlier exposed to the psychological pseudo-science lying behind the CIA’s infamous MKUltra program.Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.The reason that these organisations fill up with freaks so quickly is because there is no real oversight. Curtis quotes from a history of spying by Philip Knightley The Second Oldest Profession:The whole organisation [MI5] was riddled with nepotism – dim, dreary people of

Posted on 24 November 2020
by Lance Roberts, Clarity Financial

Moderna and Pfizer recently announced they had potential vaccines for COVID-19 that are more than 90% effective. With that, the market surged, and a rotation into “economically sensitive" sectors occurred. While a “vaccine" will eventually come to the market, it will only ensure a return to the “New New Normal."Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.The Old “New Normal"Following the “Financial Crisis," there was much discussion in the media about the “New Normal."The term originated cautioning economists and policy-makers’ belief industrial economies would revert to levels seen before the financial crisis. In other words, the “new normal" economy would look a lot

Posted on 23 November 2020
by Constantin Gurdgiev, TrueEconomics.Blogspot.in

New cases are blowing up in Sweden and are now on the declining trend in the rest of the Nordics. Charts below are showing Nordic countries adjusted for population size differences to Sweden. Click for larger image. Back arrow to return to this page.Please share this article – Go to very top of page, right hand side, for social media buttons.Editor’s note: Data for Iceland is not included in this report.This post appeared on True Economics 18 November 2020.This article updates: .
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