Econintersect: Click Read more >> below graphic to see today’s list.
The top of today’s reading list compares economic policies to primitive medicine …….. and the last article is an update on Bill McBride’s “scariest unemployment chart ever”. Don’t miss the fourth item, the world’s shortest review of China’s Third Plenum of the CCP 18th Central Committee.
- The great austerity shell game (Richard Wolf, The Guardian)
Politicians and economists impose austerity now much as doctors once stuck mustard plasters on the skins of the sick.
See also the GEI Analysis article “Austerity and Stupidity” just posted.
- The Washington Center for Equitable Growth – Neoliberalism Reloaded? (Dan Kervick, New Economic Perspectives) Dan Kervick conributes to Global Economic Intersection.
- The antibiotic era is over. And we are cutting health research funding? (Bill Gardner, The Incidental Economist)
- Phat dragon (Macro Business, 13 November 2013) The key output of the Third Plenum of the CCP 18th Central Committee is a commitment of China that “the market is the new arbiter of resource allocation“. Phat dragon says that this is “marketisation writ large, with price signals moving to the centre of decision making“. And financial deregulation is also on the agenda, although a graph showing ever widening spread between local spending and local revenues suggests that further deregulation may face some problems – how do you deregulate that which is already out of control?
Another good summation of the Third Plenum is recommended by Rob Carter: China’s leaders poised to unleash market forces after plenum (Simon Rabinovitch and Tom Mitchell, Financial Times, 12 November 2013). This review was critical of lack of specifics in the plenum communique. See also GEI News article from last night: “Rebalancing the Economy: A Tale of China and USA“.
- Our Democracy’s Unnecessary Stupidities (George Packer, The New Yorker)
- Where’s the GOP’s anti-poverty agenda? (Ryan Cooper, The Washington Post)
- Two potential headwinds for the US housing market (Sober Look) Affordability and household formation are both getting less and less favorable.
- Is Age 80 The New 60? (Financial Advisor Staff)
- What Congress didn’t say: Obamacare outlaws policies that are essentially worthless (Wendell Potter, The Center for Public Integrity)
- The Scariest Unemployment Chart Ever (Bill McBride, Calculated Risk) Linear extrapolation indicates that the number employed will recover to the peak employment level of November 2007 by approximately November 2014. Of course, the population of the country has increased by about 19 million people over the seven years. At the current employment population ratio of 63% that means we will still be 12 million short of 2007 equivalent employment after adjusting for population growth. Making that correction, the scariest graph ever will not get back to the “zero” line until sometime around 2020 (linear extrapolation) without any additional population growth. Of course we expect continued population growth and so, unless employment growth picks up, we may not get “even” for 15-20 years or more.
Click on graph for larger image at Calculated Risk.
Bill McBride has posted his own extrapolations which bracket possible dates for reaching the per-resession peak in employment: