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Breaking News: The New York Times Reports on What the Rest of the Western Hemisphere Thinks About the Conflict Between the US and Venezuela
In a significant change in reporting at The New York Times, the newspaper yesterday became the first major news outlet in the English language media to report on what the rest of the governments in the Western Hemisphere think of U.S. policy toward Venezu

Mark Weisbrot / March 13, 2015

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The Real Rate of Recovery, Part 1: The Jobless Rate
Many media outlets cite the official unemployment rate—the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ U-3 unemployment rate—when reporting on the recovery in the jobs market. This rate stood at 5.0 percent in December 2007 (the first month of the recession) and rose to

Kevin Cashman and Nicolas Buffie / March 12, 2015

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Affordable Care Act

The ACA Is Helping Workers
Two months ago, I argued that the Affordable Care Act isn't forcing firms to cut hours. Rather, the law gives workers the ability to pursue part-time employment if they so desire -- an improvement over the previous system, in which workers had to be full-

Nick Buffie / March 11, 2015

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Globalization and Trade

Fun With Brad DeLong on TPP

Brad thinks he has a winner policy with TPP, taking issue with Paul Krugman who says the deal is not worth doing. Brad argues that even if the deal is worth half of the 0.5 percent of GDP figure that is widely cited, we are still talking about 0.25 percent of GDP, or $75 billion a year for the region as a whole and $45 billion for the U.S.

He acknowledges that these gains may not be spread evenly, but wants to see evidence that the losses to workers would be larger than their share of this $75 billion. He also notes Krugman's complaint about increased protection for intellectual property, especially drug patents, and wants to see evidence that these losses will be large enough to offset the $75 billion in annual gains. Okay, let's take the DeLong challenge.

First, one of the issues raised by many TPP opponents is that it will almost certainly have nothing on currency. This mean that it will not make it any easier, and could well make it more difficult, for the United States to address the trade deficit that results from having an over-valued dollar. Whether or not that ends up being the case is of course speculative, but this could be a very big deal.

As some folks have argued, the United States has faced a serious problem of secular stagnation, meaning it does not have enough demand to bring the economy to full employment. In principle this problem can be easily addressed by a big government stimulus program. But we don't live in principle, we live in Washington, where no one in a position of power is prepared to talk about big increases in the government deficit. Hence, secular stagnation is a real live problem.

Dean Baker / March 11, 2015