Today’s Water Cooler: Biden, O’Rourke enters the race, Sanders, Warren, Yang, DSA, jobless claims, new home sales, import and export prices, Facebook, Gmail, Boeing 737 debacle, painted ladies, California fires, hemp co-operatives, first college bribery scam lawsuit, Pi Day
Thursday, March 14, 2019
Mars or Mercury Redux: How Geopolitics Influence Bilateral Trade Agreements
Quelle surprise! US trade agreements depend more on the US being a reliable military ally than many like to think.
Brexit: Send in the Clowns
May takes yet more body blows….while the no deal threat is not yet disarmed.
MMT Responds to Brad DeLong’s Challenge
Randy Wray wades in yet again to contend with disinformation about MMT.
Martin Wolf: Why Economists Failed as “Experts”—and How to Make Them Matter Again
Economists should stop pretending to be scientists and go back to the core of the discipline—as a field of inquiry and way of thinking
2:00PM Water Cooler 3/13/2019
Today’s Water Cooler, including Biden and the working class, Gabbard, Harris, Sanders, Yang, AOC, voting machines, reparations, durable goods, producer prices, inflation expecations, construction, ongoing 737 debacle, Wells Fargo, Amazon, SEIU, cash, Varsity Blues, chat, quantum time reversal
Another Way the Rich Get Richer: US Indicts Fifty for College Admissions Fraud
Federal prosecutors indicted fifty people yesterday for college admissions fraud at several elite institutions, including Georgetown, Stanford, and Yale. Serious discussion of how college admissions procedures foster inequality is long overdue.
Fracking 2.0 Was a Financial Disaster, Will Fracking 3.0 Be Different?
The latest installment in Justin Mikulka’s excellent series on fracking. The industry continues to promote new and improved saviors – this time, it’s Microsoft – to rescue it from an inconvenient truth: no one’s making any money, despite the high environmental costs incurred.
Brexit: Chaos Visible
Things continue to go badly for Theresa May’s Brexit.
The EU Is Facing Gigantic Questions About Its Future That Are Hidden in Obscure Bank Policy Decisions
The ECB again rides in to try to paper over fundamental problems with the EU’s structure and to offset is austerity bias by restarting QE. But the EU needs more government spending. Will it take another crisis to get there?
2:00PM Water Cooler 3/12/2019
By Lambert Strether of Corrente. Readers, this is a little top-heavy on politics, but I really had to do a pantry clearout! –lambert Politics “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51 “They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune […]
What’s New About Fake News?
Musing on why the level of crude propagandizing known as fake news has gotten worse.
