[Reprinted from The Austrian (September – October 2016).]
Concrete Economics: The Hamilton Approach to Economic Growth and Policy
Stephen S. Cohen and J. Bradford DeLong
Harvard Business Press Review, 2016
xi + 223 pages
About once each month, Krista Kafer and Steve Kelley have me on their show on 710 KNUS at 6 pm to discuss an economics-related topic. Last week we discussed government spending and debt, and why neither Trump nor Clinton will be cutting any government programs.
Articles referenced in the interview include:
One of the most widely accepted propositions among political economists is the following: Every monopoly is bad from the viewpoint of consumers. Monopoly is understood in its classical sense to be an exclusive privilege granted to a single producer of a commodity or service, i.e., as the absence of free entry into a particular line of production. In other words, only one agency, A, may produce a given good, x.
The rise in the personal saving rate following the Great Recession was an unexpected development in light of the Federal Reserve’s effort to foster stronger consumer spending via ultra-accommodative monetary policies.
In an American society increasingly polarized over politics, one uniting belief is that there is something very wrong with our government. While this is true, there is an unfortunate tendency — on both sides — to try to identify simple, easy to recite reforms to fix our woes.
On September 16, 2016, the US Justice Department threatened Deutsche Bank with a $14 billion fine for bond sales practices from before the 2007 Financial Crisis. Predictably, the share price immediately collapsed 8% and the financial markets went into a tizzy over equity holders losing value. This also rippled into other parts of the banking sector, for example hitting share prices of the Royal Bank of Scotland by 4%.
The Obama administration would like to create a new racial category, presumably for the Census and other federal forms. USA Today reports:
The White House is putting forward a proposal to add a new racial category for people from the Middle East and North Africa under what would be the biggest realignment of federal racial definitions in decades.
It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.
~ Joseph Stalin
With neither major party able to secure a majority of seats in the national legislature and the two parties unable to agree on a coalition government, for the last 10 months Spain has had a do-nothing caretaker government for the first time in its history. While basic government services continue, no new legislation is being proposed, foreign policy is stuck in place, and many infrastructure and other government projects are frozen.
