Category Archive: Uncategorized
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Too Much Flaring of Natural Gas? How a Carbon Tax could Help
After a few years when the practice was declining, flaring of natural gas is back in the news. (See, for example, Flares take shine off fracking boom in the Financial Times for Jan. 27.) Estimates indicate that natural gas flaring accounts for more than 1 percent of all the CO2 that human activity releases into the [...]
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Weekend Reading: The Human Side of the Housing Crash
We’ve all read endlessly about the effects of the real estate bubble on the banking system, GDP, monetary policy, and all the rest. If you have had enough financial analysis, if you are ready to read something about the human side of the housing crash, try reading Tana French’s latest novel, Broken Harbor. The story, [...]
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Why Olive Oil, Good for the Body, is Becoming Bad for the Pocketbook
It seems there almost nothing bad about olive oil. It is delicious, of course, and if you are a connoisseur, you can get as much pleasure from a fine bottle of olive oil as from a premium Brunello di Montalcino. A high content of monosaturated fats makes olive oil among the most heart-healthy of all [...]
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Can Lithuania’s New Government Meet the Economic Challenges Ahead?
Commentators often portray the Baltic countries as laboratories for testing the effects of austerity under fixed exchange rates. Although they share many common traits, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have each followed distinctive paths during the global economic crisis. Estonia maintained tighter fiscal discipline going into the crisis, helping it to win entry into the Euro. [...]
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Green Illusions: The Limits of Alternative Energy
Are solar, wind, and other alternatives the magic bullets that will solve the world’s environmental and energy problems? Take a closer look, says Ozzie Zehner in Green Illusions . Zehner not only argues that green energy has technological, environmental and economic limits, but also that without an appropriate policy context, some forms of alternative energy [...]
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US Unemployment Drops to 7.7%, Lowest Since January 2009, Payroll Jobs Continue Steady Rise
The U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 7.7 percent in November, according to today’s data release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was down 0.2 percent since October, and was the lowest rate reported since January 2009. Payroll jobs increased by 146,000 in the month, continuing a moderate but steady trend. The unemployment rate is the ratio [...]
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The Myth of Affordable Energy — Interview with Ed Dolan
Posted by James Stafford: We were fortunate enough to speak with the well known economist Ed Dolan on various energy and economic issues. In the interview Ed talks about the following: • Why cheap energy is not vital to economic growth • Why high oil prices aren’t necessarily a bad thing • Why the U.S. [...]
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By One Key Budget Indicator, the Structural Primary Balance, Even Greece Is Doing Better Than the United States. Why That Should Worry Us.
We in the United States know that we have a deficit problem, but when we hear news of the ongoing crisis in Europe, we feel a little better. At least we’re in better shape than Greece, Italy, and the other Eurozone basket cases. Aren’t we? Think again. By one key measure of fiscal health, the [...]
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Latest GDP Revision Carries a Mixed Message for the Election: Economy Weak, but Corporate Profits Strong
The revised third estimate of GDP for Q2 2012, released Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, carries a mixed message for the election campaign. The revised data show real GDP growing at an annual rate of just 1.3 percent in Q2, down from the already weak 1.7 percent of the previous estimate. The slowdown [...]
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Could QE3 Cause the Fed to Go Broke?
Each time the Fed undertakes a new program of quantitative easing, questions arise about the possible impact on its solvency. I addressed that concern in November 2010, at the time QE2 was announced. Here is an updated version of that post that looks at the solvency issue in the context of QE3. The Fed’s new [...]
