From NBER President & CEO James Poterba, on 8/5/2024:
Today is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874-1948), the economist who served as the NBER’s director of research from its founding in 1920 until his retirement in 1945. Mitchell played a key role in the NBER’s launch and early evolution. Recruiting a group of researchers dedicated to improving economic measurement, he guided projects during the 1920s on the estimation of labor’s share of national income, the measurement of the unemployment rate, and the tracking of business cycle fluctuations. His 1927 monograph <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/business-cycles-problem-and-its-setting__;!!Mak6IKo!J0PD3HvXjciBP9uRhzBWkyNPdRQBxZY8UYkJ_01cwhCjhoAk8fUrL17vPSG2PTSGd0rtqUh-iV5Matxg3CQcau0$ > on business cycles introduced the term “recession” and provided the framework for much subsequent research on turning points in macroeconomic activity. One of Mitchell’s recruits, his student Simon Kuznets, led the NBER research that laid the foundation for modern national income accounting.
In 1947, Mitchell was honored as the first recipient of the American Economic Association’s Francis A. Walker Medal, which was awarded every five years until the late 1970s to an economist who had made the most significant contributions over the course of their career. His accomplishments are celebrated in a volume <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.nber.org/books-and-chapters/wesley-clair-mitchell-economic-scientist__;!!Mak6IKo!J0PD3HvXjciBP9uRhzBWkyNPdRQBxZY8UYkJ_01cwhCjhoAk8fUrL17vPSG2PTSGd0rtqUh-iV5Matxg9CjieKM$ > edited by another of his students, Arthur Burns, who followed him as the NBER’s director of research and later became chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
Top citation in GoogleScholar (n=1627) of his 1927 monograph:
Is Walz a Xi stooge – Republicans say he is:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/walz-s-china-experience-draws-gop-attacks-but-beijing-isn-t-counting-on-better-ties/ar-AA1oWRbh?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=1398654718d64bc7bc07e5773b8b5b78&ei=11
At 25, Walz taught a year of high school in China. He returned for his honeymoon and many more times with American exchange students. As a congressman, he served on a committee tracking China’s human rights and met figures like the Dalai Lama. Now that Walz is the Democratic vice presidential nominee, Republicans have accused him of a decades long relationship with “Communist China” and even opened an investigation.
Promoting education and human rights and meeting with the Dalai Lama. What a Communist!
Clinton-era Labor chief commends Harris for economic plan that will target big monopolies
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/clinton-era-labor-chief-commends-harris-for-economic-plan-that-will-target-big-monopolies/ar-AA1oYwen?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=43844cf2df144ecda5737f9f972348db&ei=7
Former Secretary of Labor for President Bill Clinton, Robert Reich, commended Vice President Kamala Harris for her newly outlined economic plan targeting big monopolies. “I think it’s a very important plan, because what Kamala Harris is doing, building upon the very important work that was done by [President] Joe Biden, is to attack the source, one of the most important sources of high prices, and that is monopoly power,” Reich told NBC News’ Valerie Castro Friday on “NBC News Now.”
While I’m not always on the same page as Reich, he gets this exactly right. It is all about the market power of those food processing. Come on the rest of you lazy economists, dim witted journalists, and of course the MAGA morons. Market power. A basic concept that has been around for two damn centuries.
The great thing is how easy it is to explain the connection between monopoly power and price increases. Anybody fighting you in this issue, is bought and owned by Wall Street.
The segment that caught my eye: “One of Mitchell’s recruits, his student Simon Kuznets, led the NBER research that laid the foundation for modern national income accounting.”
If he truly recruited Kuznets, the man has my respect. Bow down.
I was just wandering around NBER there, because of Menzie’s links above and found this, and thought it was a pretty awesome group of facts:
https://www.nber.org/reporter/2024number2/program-report-children-and-families
Meanwhile, in “the party of family values”
https://www.marketplace.org/2024/08/09/oklahoma-turned-down-federal-food-aid-for-kids-tribal-nations-stepped-up/
Republican Governor Stittt’s children are well fed. He gives them a posh lifestyle off of real estate rents—so F**K everyone else’s kids.
Trump: A tariff is a tax on a foreign country. A lot of people like to say it’s a tax on us. No… It’s is a tax that doesn’t affect our country.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1824913358526833146
There is STOOOPID. And then there is Trump. Damn!
“I love Pennsylvania, I went to Wharton….. Wharton, at Penn”
If I was trump’s Prof, I would burn all the paper evidence he was my student.
Trump was such a run of the mill student, his professors have probably forgot he was ever in their classes.
Menzie – I question the Washington Post’s “editorial board’s” understanding of the economy and question their attempt at framing the narrative – when they call a $25,000 credit for first-time homebuyers; forgiving medical debt and continue student loan forgiveness; a child tax credit of $6,000 for families with infants, cutting taxes for families with kids and lowing prescription drug costs; and the construction of 3 million new housing units over four years – “gimmicks” – https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/16/harris-economy-plan-gimmicks/ (maybe Mr. Bezos’ has concerns that 95% of the U.S. population are seeing that Harris/Walz progressive policies make a lot of sense)
Also I like how Harris and Walz are bypassing the corporate media framing with rallies and online influencers – meanwhile the corporate media continues to prop up Trump with constant quotes from Republicans that Trump needs to “just get back to talking about policies” – sorry GOP – for a long time, you have not had any “policies” beyond the racist, divisive, misogynistic B.S/lies that Trump happens to spew that day. (I defy anyone to watch Trump press conference in NJ and tell me what his economic proposals are – what was that strange B.S. about Cheerios? If I was a corporate brand manager – I would be shuddering to see that they had purchased my products as props).
Trump told everyone he was talking those Cheerios home so he could once lard up on a big old breakfast.
Trump Mercilessly Mocked Over Frighteningly False Tariffs Claim
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-mercilessly-mocked-over-frighteningly-false-tariffs-claim/ar-AA1oZCi7?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=5dfcca0d9d994798bb255067c42f6f6d&ei=12
I wasn’t the only person who noticed this. Check out the responses to Trump’s claim tariffs have no effect.
Now I asked little Bruce Hall to explain Trump’s claim and of course our favorite moron accused me of wanting to tax ArcherDanielMIDLANDS. More on that later.
Bruce Hall and all his rightwing stupidity finally got around to getting past the stupid fixation on grocery stores by mentioning a company called Archer Daniels Midland. I guess Brucie in all of his ignorance never heard about United States v. Archer Daniels Midland Co.
The first thing this Economic Know Nothing might notice is that ADM is not a food processor (try Tyson Foods and the like) but it does provide certain things farmers need to grow their crops. Yea – little Brucie has no clue what the value chain is in agriculture as he still has his mommy risk her life going to the grocery store so little Brucie can hide in the basement.
And maybe – just maybe – little Brucie would realize that this was an anti-trust litigation. Oh wait – things like monopoly power are beyond little Brucie’s grasp. Even though the market power of the food processing sector is the issue at hand.
Republicans who agree with Harris!
Republicans, Now Critical Of Kamala Harris, Have Targeted Price Gouging In The Past
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republicans-now-critical-of-kamala-harris-have-targeted-price-gouging-in-the-past/ar-AA1oYRQD?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=c5e715a25706447c9e40424cf05541ce&ei=10
But Harris made clear she agrees with those economists who have found that some corporations, rather than merely raising prices in response to a spike in demand relative to existing supply, have taken advantage of market conditions to pad their profits with higher prices. And in select industries, Harris and these economists contend, dominant corporations have found ways to muscle out competition such that there is no natural course-correction mechanism when this price gouging occurs. What’s more, Harris singled out two industries, beef and pharmaceuticals, that have attracted scrutiny from plenty of Republicans.
In December, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) introduced legislation restricting how pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), a middleman industry that negotiates prescription drug prices for insurance plans, can operate. The bill, which now has the support of 10 Republicans and five Democrats, would require PBMs to charge insurance plans the same amount PBMs reimburse pharmacies, and pass along to insurance plans any discounts they negotiate with pharmacies. Grassley is a longtime critic of PBMs’ and pharmaceutical companies’ pricing practices, going so far as to accuse some companies of price gouging. “As a leading advocate for lowering drug prices in the U.S. Senate, I’ve hauled Big Pharma and pharmacy benefit manager executives before Congress, led a two-year bipartisan investigation into insulin price-gouging, and advanced bipartisan reforms to lower the cost of insulin and many other prescription drugs,” Grassley wrote in an October 2022 op-ed in the Iowa City Press-Citizen. He sounds a whole lot like Harris, who said on Friday, “I’ll lower the cost of insulin and prescription drugs for everyone with your support, not only our seniors and demand transparency from the middlemen who operate between Big Pharma and the insurance companies, who use opaque practices to raise your drug prices and profit off your need for medicine.”
There are likewise a number of Republican lawmakers who have advocated for federal intervention to stop price gouging in the beef industry. Grassley joined Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) in February 2023 to reintroduce the Meat Packing Special Investigator Act, which would create a new special investigator in the Department of Agriculture to crack down on meatpacking giants’ anticompetitive practices.
The trio argued that concentration in the meatpacking industry, which is now dominated by just four companies, has enabled corporations to at once squeeze independent cattle ranchers with lower purchase prices, and then charge consumers higher and higher prices in supermarkets.
“For years, the gap has widened between the price paid to cattle producers for their high-quality American products and the price of beef at the grocery store,” Rounds said at the time. “Meanwhile, the four largest beef packers, who control 85 percent of our beef processing capacity, have enjoyed record profits. This has resulted in an average of nearly 17,000 cattle ranchers going out of business each year since 1980.” Harris alluded to similar dynamics when she lamented that the price of “ground beef is up 50%. Many of the big food companies are seeing their highest profits in two decades. And while many grocery chains pass along these savings, others still aren’t.” “We will help the food industry become more competitive, because I believe competition is the lifeblood of our economy,” she added. “More competition means lower prices for you and your families.” Some Republicans have even shared Harris’ concern about lack of competition in the supermarket industry.
Promoting competition. Those Communists!
https://jabberwocking.com/raw-data-crime-under-five-presidents/
Raw data: Crime under five presidents
The violent crime rate fell a lot under Clinton, a little bit more under Bush43, and a little bit more under Obama. Of course Trump changed all of that and gave us a bit more crime. And then Biden came along and undid Herr Trump’s efforts lower this crime rate.
I can see the next Trump political ads – Violent Criminals for Trump-Vance. MAGA!
Kellogg, Kraft Win Antitrust Suit Against Egg Companies
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/antitrust/kellogg-kraft-win-in-price-fixing-suit-against-egg-companies
General Mills Inc., a Kraft Heinz Co. unit, Kellogg Co., and Nestle SA for years likely overpaid for eggs because the nation’s largest producers and two trade groups conspired to restrict the supply, an Illinois federal jury decided on Tuesday. A US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois jury of nine men and three women said the two largest US egg producers, Cal-Maine Foods Inc. and Rose Acre Farms Inc., along with two egg-industry trade groups, will have to pay damages to the food companies.
MAGA morons like Bruce Hall blame Biden for high egg prices but when we propose to use anti-trust laws to promote competition, they cry COMMUNISM.
A lot of critics of the Harris proposal to restore competition in the food sector cite Jason Furman
Market Concentration: Jason Furman talks about market concentration and market power in the US
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mynKUnD7Ek
Furman testified before an OECD committee back in 2018 noting market power in the US has been increasing. To suggest Furman disagrees with pro-competition policies is uninformed and dishonest.
Belarus has sent a third iof its troops to its border with Ukraine.
President Lukashenko claims this is in response to Ukraine massing troops near Belarus. Ukraine has troops defending its front line the length of its border with Russia and active within Russia. Attacking Belarus would stretch Ukraine’s forces even thinner than they are now.
Lukashenko may have created a pretext to stretch Ukrainian troops thinner by requiring Ukraine to respond to Belarusian troops, a favor to his friend Putin.
Belarusian troop movements may be intended to pull Ukrainian troops out of Kursk.
Well, if you’ll recall the Russian troops on Ukraine’s north border was the convincing thing to me on predicting Russia’s 2nd invasion of Ukraine. To me that was enough to say >90% is was gonna happen (tempted to mention other things about that, right about here). Uuhm, This to me is red herring stuff. I don’t see Belarus troops getting involved AT ALL. So something approximate to your last sentence is how I view this.
Exactly. To my mind, the only question is how to get the most bang for Lukashenko’s buck.
I know nothing of military stuff, but Ukraine’s performance on the battlefield suggests they could impose disastrous losses on Belarusian troops in the early days of conflict. That’s what I’d expect Ukraine to do, in order to get back to business with Russia as soon as possible. If Lukashenko sees it that way, too, then invading Ukraine is a bad idea. Keeping Ukrainian forces tied up on the Belarusian border goes a long way toward helping Putin.
All if this is in the context of potential peace talks. Keeping Ukraine under pressure, easing pressure on Russia, seems a likely goal while positioning for talks.
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