I hear variations of the quote above almost every day, which usually go unchallenged. How can that be since it is so obviously wrong? It reminds me of the old Richard Pryor line: “Who are you going to believe: me or your own lying eyes? Local governments hire policemen, fire fighters, and school teachers. State [...]
The other day a top-notch interviewer on financial radio was paying more than his usual deference to his distinguished guest on the subject of health care. The guest summed things up with an analogy. He said the case for requiring young people who don’t want health insurance to purchase it anyway was the same as [...]
Nonfarm payroll employment declined by another 263,000 jobs in September. According the the Labor Department release, over the recent period . . . “From May through September, job losses averaged 307,000 per month, compared with losses averaging 645,000 per month from November 2008 to April. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, payroll [...]
(The Glass is Half Full; not Half Empty) The good news that employment declined less in August than in previous months is more important than the bad news of the rise in the unemployment rate. As I've noted here previously, the unemployment rate (from the household survey) had not kept up with employment losses [...]
The decline in payroll jobs of 247, 000 was a pleasant surprise to most observers, including me. It continues the "less bad is the new good" paradigm, but I'll take it. The negative must get smaller before it becomes positive. More surprising to me was the decline in the unemployment rate from 9.5 percent to [...]
Last Friday's weak jobs report accelerated discussions of a possible second stimulus package. Will wonders never cease? I agreed that the first stimulus package should've been large and have come soon. We got large and we got soon, if soon is defined by the date of the legislation. Not soon as defined by when it [...]
Commonsense Economics Several years ago the public affairs staff at the Dallas Fed undertook a project to create a little booklet with the title above containing what they regarded as nuggets of economic wisdom they found in combing through some of my speeches and writings. That project was never finished. However, in digging up [...]