inequality

This is a loaded topic. This entry, however, is not intended to be political. Very few things in economics are good or bad in themselves, but rather can be good under certain conditions or bad under others. I want to try to tease out as…

The latest flow of funds data from the US Federal Reserve show that the great American household deleveraging may be over. This should add a credit accelerator to the US economy which maintains growth. Meanwhile analysts are increasingly…

The global economic recovery continues as all of the most important economies in the world are on track for growth. Europe is the laggard and the tepid recovery there could still stall out. Below are some brief ideas on where this is headed…

Below is a video interview Larry Summers conducted with Bloomberg Television. We provide the partial transcript without comment, courtesy of Bloomberg Television.

One of the reasons that it is been so hard for a lot of analysts, even trained economists, to understand the imbalances that were at the root of the current crisis is that we too easily confuse national savings with household savings. By…

A recent ECB household-wealth survey was interpreted by the media as evidence that poor Germans shouldn’t have to pay for southern Europe. This column takes a look at the numbers. Whilst it’s true that median German households are poor…

Recently the ECB conducted a eurosystem household finance and consumption survey and man have been talking about it because it shows that household wealth in places like Italy and Spain is greater than it is in Germany. The question I think…

I want to direct you to a post at the Institute for Public Accuracy that features political economy commentator Tom Ferguson because his analysis of exit polls is interesting. What he has picked up on is that the big divide in the 2012 vote…

A reader asked me to comment on a video from the Big Picture conference of Jim Bianco commenting on the so-called wealth effect of quantitative easing. In the video, Jim takes the position that the Fed cannot create permanent wealth though…

we are seeing an ever shrinking number of people paying an ever greater portion of the taxes. Though they also are the ever shrinking number of people acquiring an ever greater portion of the wealth. There is little that matches the…