Economy

As James Galbraith has argued, the problem is said to be no more serious than some clogged plumbing. A bit of Drano in the form of government handouts and guarantees should be sufficient to get credit flowing again. Nonsense. Private debt…

Below are two charts from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The first shows the US Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers from 1913 through March. The second shows the same data from 1990. The US has generally had a positive…

One of the key premises underpinning the establishment of the Euro as a common currency to be shared by a number of individual national states rather than one single nation was the central idea that the several economies of the…

Hat tip to Steve Keen for these jokes. This is how bad the economy is.

Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 244,000 in April, and the unemployment rate edged up to 9.0 percent.

In the week ending April 30, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 474,000, an increase of 43,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 431,000. The 4-week moving average was 431,250, an increase of 22,250…

Despite pumping trillions of yen into the economy over the last decade, Japan's M3 money stock is no higher now than it was at the beginning of the last decade as the private sector has deleveraged.

With the arrival of the first real Japanese data since the Tsunami struck the immensity of the tragedy which Japan is passing through is only now gradually becoming apparent. Exports were down by a seasonally adjusted 7.7% in March over…

Sterling is falling against the US dollar this morning after the April manufacturing PMI has come in weaker than expected at 54.6, the lowest in seven months. Inflation is the third highest since the data was first collected in 1999.

Michael Pettis argues that Reserve currency status is a global public good that comes with a cost, and people often forget that cost.