Dean Baker's Blog, page 535

Robert Samuelson's Con Job

Robert Samuelson devoted his column today to decrying the lack of confidence in the U.S. economy. While confidence is indeed low, this largely reflects the prolonged downturn. Contrary to what Samuelson suggests, there is nothing surprising about the lack of confidence given the most prolonged period of high unemployment since the Great Depression.

In fact, given the weakness of demand, consumption and investment are both surprisingly high. The saving rate is hovering near 5.0 percent, well b...

NPR Continues Its Campaign Against Social Security by Telling Listeners That We Don't Have Enough People

Morning Edition had a segment with journalist Phillip Longman who told listeners that the world was suffering from having too few children [sorry, no link yet]. Longman wrongly said that European countries now have large budget deficits because they have too few workers and large pension obligations.

This is not true. European countries have large budget deficits because their economies collapsed as a result of the collapse of housing bubbles in countries like Spain, the United Kingdom, and I...

NPR Doesn't Know That China Could Slow Growth by Raising the Value of Its Currency

That is what listeners to a Morning Edition segment would conclude [sorry, no link yet]. The piece told listeners that China's efforts to slow its economy would be bad news for the rest of the world since it would reduce the growth of China as an export market for other countries.

However China can actually slow its economy by replacing domestically produced goods with imports. This can be done by raising the value of the yuan against other currencies. This measure would also have the...

The Washington Post Is Unhappy About Plans to Reduce the Value of the Dollar

Those who know economics recognize the trade deficit is the basic imbalance facing the economy today. If the U.S had balanced trade it would create in the neighborhood of 4 million manufacturing jobs.

Also, by getting trade closer to balance, the country would no longer be a net borrower. By definition, countries that are net borrowers must either have budget deficits or negative private savings, as the U.S. did at the peak of the housing bubble.

This is why it is so peculiar that the...

Morgan Stanley Director Erskine Bowles Calls for Cutting Social Security and Medicare

Morgan Stanley Director Erskine Bowles, along with his sidekick former Senator Alan Simpson, once again used the Washington Post oped page to call for cuts to Social Security and Medicare. The two made the call in the context of a piece urging the congressional "supercommittee" to produce a large deficit reduction package.

They argued that it was necessary for cuts in "entitlements" to be part of any deficit package. "Entitlements" is the preferred euphimism for Social Security and Medicare f...

Will Thomas Friedman's Column Be Better in the Future?

Those who just read the headline of Friedman's column, "how did the robot end up with my job?" will be disappointed if they are expecting an improvement in the quality of columns appearing on the NYT oped page. It turns out that Friedman was just speaking metaphorically.

Friedman yet again gives us a big picture that is completely out of focus:

"In the last decade, we have gone from a connected world (thanks to the end of the cold war, globalization and the Internet) to a hyperconnected...

If Millennials Do Worse Than Their Parents, It Will Be Because Bill Gates' Kids Have All the Money

The Washington Post had a column by a millennial columnist complaining about the lack of opportunity. It is striking that the column never once mentioned income inequality.

There is no doubt that millennials will on average be far wealthier than their parents. Output per hour has roughly doubled over the last three decades, meaning that the real wage could be almost twice as high today as it was in 1980. Insofar as the typical millennial is not seeing the benefits of this productivity growth ...

In Greece, Austerity Measures Weaken the Economy, What Did the Post Expect?

They kept spraying water on the wood, but they just couldn't get the fireplace started. The Post wrote the equivalent in an article on the Greek crisis:

"The government has raised taxes and cut services and is announcing tougher steps every other week. So far it has been to no avail; the economic outlook keeps getting worse, not better."

When the government pulls money out of the economy by laying off workers, cutting government workers' pay, and raising taxes, the expected result is a...

Mortgage Debt Is NOT the Main Factor Holding Back U.S. Growth Back

The NYT had an article about the prospects of persistently slower growth in Europe and the U.S. as a result of the current downturn. It told readers that:

"Now, just as the United States economy is held back by households whose mortgages are still underwater and who won't begin to spend again until they have run down their debts, Europe can't begin to grow again until its countries learn to live within their means."

Actually, the United States economy is not being held back by a lack of...

Bloomberg Doesn't Like Financial Speculation Taxes and Is Prepared To Make Stuff Up to Make Its Case

Bloomberg News Service really doesn't like financial speculation taxes (FST). In fact it dislikes them so much that it is prepared to make things up to try to get people to oppose an FST. It told readers that the very low financial speculation taxes (0.05 percent on each side of a stock trade 0.005 percent on each side of a derivative trade) being considered by the European Union would shave 0.5 percentage points off of Europe's growth rate.

Let's think about this one for a moment. In the...