2017

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble talked to German weekly Der Spiegel about the election of Emmanuel Macron as French President, and this interview is being widely quoted in the English-language press without benefit of a…

The labor market in the US is tighter today than it was at the same period last year. This, in conjunction with the last jobs report, gives cover to the Fed to hike rates in June.

It is now clear that Donald Trump dismissed FBI Director James Comey in a fit of pique over the investigations into Trump’s ties to Russia. But this move has already backfired, with the Senate investigation issuing subpoenas to former Trump…

I just finished reading an illuminating article by Andrew Ross Sorkin on healthcare and it got me to thinking about a review of structural reforms by Dani Rodrik which encapsulates the problem with fixes to ‘competitiveness’. The message:…

At the height of the European Sovereign Debt Crisis, German leader Angela Merkel was openly calling for ‘more Europe, not less’. With Emmanuel Macron elected to the Presidency of France on that platform, Merkel has perhaps her only chance…

Baumol was a giant in promoting entrepreneurship. And most importantly here, his theory on rising costs in labor intensive industries is something that the Nobel committee considered in 2003 and should have given him an award for.

Remember the debates about structural unemployment back during the beginning of this recovery. The question was whether policymakers would write off a whole cadre of workers as ‘unemployable’ and formulate policy as if they weren’t…

As we await the US jobs data, it bears remembering that oil is a big wildcard both on in terms of consumption and investment. Right now, oil is plunging, down as much as $14 a barrel for the Brent variant and $17 a barrel for WTI since…

All negotiations are mechanisms to split the benefits of mutually acceptable outcomes. The point is to figure out if there actually is a mutually acceptable outcome, and then to get as much of the benefit for one’s side as possible. The…

Claims data are still consistent with an economy adding 200,000 per month, meaning we should expect a snap back from last month’s low figure when the US jobs numbers are released tomorrow.