From the award-winning British novelist Ian McEwan, who happens to be living in Paris, and who was out on the town on the night of the slaughter, writing at edge.org: The death cult chose its city well—Paris, secular capital of the world, as hospitable, diverse and charming a metropolis as [continue reading . . . ]
Worried about your Social Security benefits? You ought to be. Whether you are in your 70s or your 20s , the number of workers taxed to support you in our pay-as-you-go social-insurance system are or will be fewer than supported your parents and grandparents. We’re living longer and having fewer [continue reading . . . ]
Don’t miss the essay in the Wall Street Journal on Sept. 19, 2015 by Dr. Bjørn Lomborg, the Danish author and environmentalist, featuring what I regard as uncommon sense on climate change. No Wall Street Journal subscription? If you have a library card in your purse or wallet, you can [continue reading . . . ]
My good friend Vince Schuler has taken me out salmon fishing on Puget Sound several times since early August. Even a bad day on the salt chuck beats a good day at the office. Fishing has been good, catching not so much. Until today. We picked up our limit of [continue reading . . . ]
Employment has been growing faster than average in the recent past on the West Coast generally and in the Pacific Northwest states in particular. Among the states I follow as a regional economist, Montana and Alaska, both hit hard by the collapse of oil prices, rank well below aveage. The [continue reading . . . ]
Good on us that the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate estimated at 3.7% in the April-May-June quarter rather than the 2.2% rate announced as the first estimate a month ago. But don’t get too excited. State and local government spending accounted for a higher-than-average share of the growth [continue reading . . . ]
One of the main problems with China’s economy is that it is geared too heavily to exports and infrastructure spending, too little to domestic consumption. You can see the contrast with the U.S. in the chart. American consumers are in the driver’s seat in the U.S. Household consumption in 2014 [continue reading . . . ]
So the Chinese routinely send to our shores boatload after boatload of relatively inexpensive stuff that helps fill up our box stores and helps keep U.S. inflation in check. We send back little pieces of paper that say “IOU.” The Chinese tend to invest their trade surplus in the safest [continue reading . . . ]
Two decades ago China’s economy was roughly a quarter the size of the U.S. economy. Today the economies are of roughly equal size, each producing about $17.5 trillion worth of goods and services based on an economic concept known as purchasing power parity (PPP). The concept discounts the effects of [continue reading . . . ]
If you haven’t read it, get to your library (or use your library card) to read Ruchir Sharma’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal August 17 (Page A 11). He argues that with advanced economies stuck in slow-growth mode, the globe is “one shock away from recession” and that the [continue reading . . . ]
June marks the end of the sixth year since the Great Recession passed into history. At 18 months, it was the lengthiest recession since World War II, surpassing the 16 months of the other notably long-lived post-war recessions, ended in March 1975 and November 1982. For duation, of course, the [continue reading . . . ]
Thanks to Andrew Pohl for this comment this morning: Dear Michael, I attended your presentation to the CFA [Chartered Financial Analyst] society back in 2012 and I wanted to write you and thank you again for your speech. While it was a while ago, I still think of you and [continue reading . . . ]