Dean Baker's Blog, page 284

NYT Tells Readers Maine Governor Boasts About Creating Jobs at 75 Percent of the Rate of the Rest of the Country

That is what the NYT told readers, but because of the way it told them, most readers probably did not realize it. The paper had an article on Maine's gubernatorial race in which it reported that Paul LePage, the incumbent Republican governor, boasts of creating 22,000 private sector jobs during his term of office.

It is not possible to know whether this is a good or bad performance without knowing the size of Maine's labor force. While most readers would probably not know this statistic offha...

Lesson for Steven Pearlstein: Economies Ordinarily Grow

Steven Pearlstein is usually pretty astute in his comments on the economy, but not today. In his complaint about Yellen's lose monetary policy he tells readers:

"With stock and bond prices back around record levels, however, and the recession long since ended, output, employment and business lending are above where they were at the height of the bubble. That is why the Fed has been winding down the extraordinary measures it took during the recession of buying up vast quantities of Treasury an...

Low Down Payment Mortgages Have Much Higher Default Rates

That is a fact that would have been worth mentioning in a Washington Post article on plans by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to lower the down payment requirements on the mortgages they purchase. The delinquency rate, which closely follows the default rate, is several times higher for people who put 5 percent or less down on a house than for people who put 20 percent or more down.

Contrary to what some folks seem to believe, getting moderate income people into a home that they subsequently lose...

What Percent of Retail Workers are Full-Time?

News reporting should not be a he said, she said affair when it comes to factual matters. In principle, reporters have the time to determine the truth, readers do not.

For this reason, it was disappointing to read in an otherwise good NYT article on the push for higher wages at Walmart:

"Retail workers ages 25 to 54 who work full time for at least three consecutive months make an average of $38,376 a year, slightly more than full-time workers in nonretail jobs, the group [the National Retail...

Arthur Brooks Argues We Should be Soft on Rich Criminals in Sharing Economy

We all know how hard is to get rich these days, so it's understandable that Arthur Brooks wants to give the young men and women making fortunes in the "sharing economy" a hand. (He even dubs it the "helping industry," which apparently is to distinguish it from sectors like health care and education.) Anyhow, the gist of his piece is that companies like Airbnb are actually about helping people -- allowing people with unused rooms to make a bit of extra money, while people from out of town get...

The Deflationary Trap: Europe Has Already Fallen

The NYT had an interesting piece about growing opposition to Germany's creationist economics. The piece reports that France and Italy are leading the opposition to German's insistence that austerity is the key to economic growth, in the face of massive amounts of evidence showing that the euro zone needs stimulus to boost growth. 

At one point the piece points to worries over "the prospect of falling into a deflationary trap." It is difficult to see what anyone would be worried about. T...

More Handouts to the Financial Industry

We all know that the Wall Street types find it hard to get by without a helping hand from the government (like the bailouts), but many people don't realize all the different ways in which the financial industry manages to siphon away income from the productive economy. Floyd Norris has an interesting piece about a lawsuit coming before the Supreme Court in which an employer (Edison International) is being sued by its workers for deliberately picking a 401(k) plan with high administrative cost...

China is Bigger Than the U.S., but Roger Cohen Thinks Jacking Up Drug Prices Will Restore U.S. Power in Asia

Some of the ideas of elite pundit types are truly amazing. Roger Cohen's NYT column today was about the fact that China's influence in Asia is rising at the expense of the United States. He tells readers:

"A new Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea and elsewhere is palpable. By contrast, the United States seems less focused on the region since former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton left office."

The reality is that China has a larger economy than the United States. Its economy is a...

Debt Is Hitting Its Limits: That Is Why Interest Rates Are Plummeting

Yes, Robert Samuelson is warning about debt again. Apparently the sharp drop in interest rates around the world leads him to believe that investors are about to lose confidence in the ability of countries to repay their debt.

It's great that we have Samuelson to give us these warnings, otherwise people might think that low interest rates (i.e. high bond prices) meant the markets were telling us that there is not enough debt. After all, high prices usually means demand exceeds supply.

Thankful...

Quick Note on Heavy Babies and GDP Accounting

David Leonhardt and Amanda Cox had an interesting Upshot piece about new research showing that heavier babies do better in school. One implication is that many of the induced births that doctors have performed in recent decades have actually been counterproductive from the standpoint of the health of the child. (Obviously the health of the mother must also be considered.)

This is an interesting finding, although I'll leave it to medical professionals to assess the strength of the evidence her...