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Is the Stock Market in Another Bubble?Dean Baker
Al Jazeera America, April 27, 2015
Dean Baker / April 28, 2015
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The Battle Over the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Fast-Track Gets HotDean Baker
Truthout, April 27, 2015
Dean Baker / April 28, 2015
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Young Black America Part Two: College Entry and CompletionCherrie Bucknor / April 28, 2015
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Washington Post Prints Column on Japan and TPP by Paul Ryan ImpersonatorDean Baker / April 28, 2015
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Ουάισμπροτ: Προωθεί η Ευρώπη αλλαγή καθεστώτος στην Ελλάδα;Mark Weisbrot / April 27, 2015
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Washington Post Comes Out Against Trans-Pacific PartnershipDean Baker / April 27, 2015
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Who Makes the Minimum Wage and Who Earns Less Than the Old Minimum WageDean Baker / April 26, 2015
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Washington Post Uses News Section to Lobby for Deficit Reduction in the United KingdomDean Baker / April 26, 2015
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And What Do They Pay for The National Health Service in the United Kingdom?Dean Baker / April 26, 2015
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Latin America and the Caribbean
Vice on HBO Follows the Money in HaitiVikram Gandhi, VICE on HBO correspondent travelled to Haiti to see just what happened with the $10 billion in aid pledged after the earthquake that occurred more than five years ago. The episode aired at 11 PM EST 4/24/15.
In a sneak peek, Gandhi goes to the site of a housing expo held in 2011. Organized by the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission led by Bill Clinton, the expo was meant to showcase model homes that could be built across the country. With more than a million made homeless, and hundreds of thousands of homes damaged or destroyed, providing new housing was seen as key to “building back better.”
Jake Johnston / April 25, 2015
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Correction to Mankiw: Economists Actually Agree, Just Because You Call Something "Free Trade" Doesn't Make It Free Trade (see correction)Greg Mankiw joined the parade of prominent people saying silly things to help push fast-track trade authority through Congress. He headlined a column:
"Economists actually agree on this point: The Wisdom of Free Trade."
The piece then goes on to argue for fast-track trade authority to allow for the passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Pact (TTIP).
It's nice that Mankiw has apparently gotten out his bag of economist's holy water and blessed them both as free trade agreements, but that doesn't make it true. (Hey, I want to have the Congress Gives $1 Trillion to Dean Baker Free Trade Act. As an economist in good standing, Mankiw will have to support this free trade measure.)
The basic story here is a very simple one. There are merits to reducing trade barriers, but traditional trade deals will have winners and losers. If this is hard to understand, imagine that we had a free trade deal in physicians' services so that a flood of foreign doctors cut the pay of doctors by 50 percent (@$125,000 a year on average). This would make most of us winners, since we will pay less for health care, but doctors would be big losers. Most traditional trade deals have this character. So people, including economist people, may reasonably oppose them if they think the losers will be hurt so much that it offsets the gains from the deal. (Yes, we can do redistribution, but that is a children's story. We don't.)
But the key point here is that neither the TPP or TTIP is a traditional trade deal. The formal trade barriers between the parties to these deals are already low, which means there is not much room to lower them further. These deals are mostly about putting in place a business friendly structure of regulation. Some of this business friendly regulation involves increasing barriers in the form of stronger and longer patent and copyright protection. (Yes, that is "protection," as in protectionism.)
Dean Baker / April 24, 2015
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Obama is Failing Us All by Ignoring the Need for Currency Rules in TPPDean Baker
The Guardian, April 22, 2015
Dean Baker / April 23, 2015
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Patent Monopolies and the Costs of Mismarketing DrugsRavi Katari and Dean Baker / April 23, 2015
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Are European Officials Pushing for Regime Change in Greece?Mark Weisbrot / April 23, 2015
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Pinocchio Wars: Senator Sherrod Brown Versus the Washington Post Fact CheckerGlenn Kessler, the Washington Post fact checker, gave four Pinocchios this morning to Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown for for mis-attributing a claim on lost jobs from the trade deficit to George W. Bush. Since I may have played a role in the Pinocchio warranting comments, let me try to clear up some possible confusion on the issue.
At the most basic level there are two different ways to view trade based on two different views of the overall economy. The conventional view is that trade affects the allocation of output (i.e. we produce more of some goods and services and less of others) but has little impact on the overall level of output. This is because the economy is assumed to be at or near full employment. The other view is that trade can have a large impact on employment and output because the economy is often not near full employment. In this case, the size of the trade deficit can make a big difference.
Dean Baker / April 23, 2015