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“The piece gives a series of case studies. Parramore summarized the problem: “Players on Wall Street have been torpedoing our chances of averting environmental catastrophe for years. A group of billionaire financiers has made sure the companies the government must partner with to fight climate change are focused on one thing only – making these men (they all seem to be men) even richer. Instead of leading the world in climate change technology, firms like Apple, GE, and Intel have been pressured to become the personal piggy banks of powerful moneymen — known as hedge fund activists — who can’t see beyond the next quarterly report.” — Institute for Public Accuracy

Like Republicans with political polls, unemployed Black workers are underrepresented in federal employment data because of non-response.

“Pressley’s resolution builds upon the academic intellectual framework developed by advocates like Dantas and Wray, as well as the ongoing civil rights demand for federally guaranteed jobs, which can be seen in the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I have a dream” speech) and indeed long before that. It also draws on the work of Sadie Alexander, recognized as the nation’s first Black woman economist. Speaking at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College in 1945 (as noted by Professor Nina Banks, blogging at the Institute for New Economic Thinking), Alexander described full employment as a way to address the nation’s economic and racial imperatives.” — Marin Levine, Nonprofit Quarterly

A large and growing percentage of households are missed in the monthly Current Population Survey (CPS).

The $1.9 trillion stimulus should be large because the need is large

Rob Johnson appeared on the Background Briefing with Ian Masters to discuss working with Trumpsters, the source of their anguish, and important pathways to healing

Conservative legal theory is based on a shoddy definition of what constitutes “efficiency”

Conservative legal theory is based on a shoddy definition of what constitutes “efficiency”

Two separate INET funded research articles are cited; first from Schularick, Jordà, & Taylor on leveraged bubbles followed by Bao, Hommes, & Makarewicz on bubble formation. “Since their inception, financial markets, and to a lesser extent some real markets, have been subject to bubbles. … More recently, stock prices, but also credit, real estate, commodities, bond markets, and famously, bitcoin, are all assets that have experienced bubble episodes. Regarding cryptocurrencies, many economists also defend a permanent bubble, their fundamental value being theoretically non-existent.” …. In fact, the presence of bubbles in the markets (financial and real) seems to stem from the persistent behavior of economic agents. Experimental studies, controlling exactly the actual value, showed that participants tended to set up a bubble-like operation, with price surges and collapses very similar to real economy situations, and in no way related to a change in the market.

“Texas’ leaders knew as of 2011 … when the state went through a short severe freeze, that the system was radically unstable in extreme weather,” wrote James K. Galbraith, of the University of Texas at Austin, in the Institute for New Economic Thinking. “But they did nothing,” he wrote. “To do something, they would have had to regulate the system. And they didn’t want to regulate the system, because the providers, a rich source of campaign funding, didn’t want to be regulated and to have to spend on weatherization that was not needed – most of the time.” That’s what happens when the private sector calls the shots. Money first.” — Richard Gross, Counterpunch

“Economic opportunity was further restricted by individual and institutionalized racism and political disenfranchisement. Discrimination in hiring by employers and intimidation of black workers through violence placed black workers at a direct disadvantage in the labor market,” Trevon Logan Peter Temin wrote in “Inclusive American Economic History: Containing Slaves, Freedmen, Jim Crow Laws, and the Great Migration,” a working paper written for the Institute for New Economic Thinking.” — Coastal Review

Single-family home-ownership—elusive for many today—is an aspiration we ought to abandon

Does the COVID recession still have the potential to turn into a broader financial meltdown?

The IPCC was correct in emphasizing the need for early mitigation, but their analysis of possible growth trajectories appears to be faulty.

“We’re building a data system, because you can’t really manage a city if you don’t know who’s there and what’s in it.”