When interest rates rise, the price of long-term assets falls. Consequently, when the Fed began raising interest rates in 2022, the value of bonds and mortgages dropped, causing significant accounting losses for banks heavily invested in these assets. Silicon Valley Bank went bust, for example, because depositors fled upon realizing it was holding lots of […]
Bailouts Forever
Bailouts Forever
02 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in business cycles, economic history, financial economics, global financial crisis (GFC), macroeconomics, monetary economics, politics - USA Tags: deposit insurance
Has Worker Pay Kept Up with Productivity Growth?
02 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, econometerics, economic history, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, poverty and inequality
You will be astonished, gentle reader, to learn that the question of whether worker pay has kept up with productivity growth turns out to depend on 1) how you measure worker pay; and 2) how you measure productivity growth. Scott Winship considers the alternatives and issues in “Understanding Trends in Worker Pay over the Past…
Has Worker Pay Kept Up with Productivity Growth?
A Primer on Marginal Tax Rates, Part IV: The Combined Burden of Levies on Income, Payroll, and Consumption
02 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in Public Choice, public economics Tags: taxation and investment, taxation and labour supply
When I think of the world’s most mistreated taxpayers, a few options come to mind. Cam Newton, the quarterback who faced a marginal tax rate of nearly 200 percent on his Super Bowl bonus. The 8,000 French households who had to surrender more than 100 percent of their income in 2012. The unfortunate Spanish laborer […]
A Primer on Marginal Tax Rates, Part IV: The Combined Burden of Levies on Income, Payroll, and Consumption
Starmer mocked for flying in private jet to launch party’s clean energy plan
01 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, transport economics Tags: British politics
By Paul Homewood h/t Russell Hicks You could not make it up!! https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/05/31/keir-starmer-private-jet-clean-energy-plan-launch-scotland/ What a pathetic excuse! There was no reason at all why this announcement had to be made in Scotland, other than sheer politicking. And there was certainly no reason why it could not have been made a few hours […]
Starmer mocked for flying in private jet to launch party’s clean energy plan
Carbon Dioxide and a Warming Climate are not problems
01 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in energy economics, environmental economics, global warming Tags: climate alarmism
By Andy May and Marcel Crok We were charged by Marty Rowland and the American Journal of Economics and Sociology (AJES) with writing a literature review paper supporting the skeptical (aka “denier”) position with regard to dangerous man-made climate change. Our paper is fully peer-reviewed and presents what we think is the most convincing argument. […]
Carbon Dioxide and a Warming Climate are not problems
Does a country has ever been able to run entirely on renewables?
01 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in energy economics, environmental economics, global warming Tags: solar power, Tasmania, wind power
On this blog, I already looked in some rather confusing fact-checks. There is for example the fact-checker who was struggling to find an example of someone actually making the claim he is fact-checking and the fact-checker who fact-checked a entirely different claim than he was set to do. I think there is a new contender […]
Does a country has ever been able to run entirely on renewables?
*Best Things First*
01 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, development economics, growth disasters, health economics Tags: The Great Escape
The author is Bjorn Lomborg, and the subtitle is The 12 most efficient solutions for the world’s poorest and our global SDG promises. I missed this book when it first came out last year. Here is what Lomborg presents as the twelve best global investments, in no particular order: Tuberculosis Maternal and newborn health Malaria […]
*Best Things First*
French Mutinies – Tunnels Under Messines Ridge I THE GREAT WAR Week 149
01 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in defence economics, war and peace Tags: World War I
“Democracy is on the Ballot”: California Democrats Seek to Prevent Voters from Approving New Taxes
01 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, income redistribution, law and economics, Public Choice, public economics Tags: constitutional law
“Democracy is on the ballot.” That mantra of President Joe Biden and other democrats has suggested that “this may be our last election” if the Republicans win in 2024. A few of us have noted that the Democrats seem more keen on claiming the mantle of the defenders of democracy than actually practicing. Democrats have […]
“Democracy is on the Ballot”: California Democrats Seek to Prevent Voters from Approving New Taxes
Trump is Convicted: What Comes Next?
01 Jun 2024 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics - USA Tags: 2016 presidential elections, 2024 presidential election
This morning, many of us are emerging from the late coverage last night after the conviction of former President Donald Trump on 34 felonies. I was in the courtroom for the verdict, which hit like a thunderclap (particularly after a strange snafu with the judge). The question that everyone is asking: what happens next?
Trump is Convicted: What Comes Next?
Karen Chhour Skewers The Maori Party
31 May 2024 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of crime, economics of education, income redistribution, labour economics, law and economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - New Zealand, poverty and inequality, property rights, Public Choice, public economics Tags: child abuse, child poverty, crime and punishment, family poverty, law and order
Article is by Chris Lynch and I have pinched this one from The BFD Blog. `ĀCT MP Karen Chhour has responded to the Maori Party’s “divisive outbursts.” Co-leader Rawiri Waititi said yesterday, ‘It’s now time for us to step comfortably into our rangatiratanga and to not give too much to this Pakeha Government with their […]
Karen Chhour Skewers The Maori Party
How Nazi war criminals fled to South America – WW2 Documentary Special
31 May 2024 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economics of crime, law and economics, laws of war, war and peace Tags: Nazi Germany, The Holocaust, World War II
The future
31 May 2024 Leave a comment
in energy economics, environmental economics, global warming Tags: solar power, wind power
The Huge Potential Benefits of Charter Schools
30 May 2024 Leave a comment
in economics of bureaucracy, economics of education, managerial economics, organisational economics, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice
Alwyn Poole writes – In New Zealand we have approximately 460 high schools. The gaps between the schools that produce the best results for students and those at the other end of the spectrum are enormous. In terms of the data for their leavers, the top 30 schools have an average of 87% of their […]
The Huge Potential Benefits of Charter Schools
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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