Attention Economy


Wednesday, March 31, 2021

Federal Reserve Independence

Treasury–Federal Reserve Cooperation and the Importance of Central Bank Independence
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/files/waller20210329a.pdf 

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Asia’s High-Growth Companies

Asia's hidden high-growth companies reach for the sky
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Asia-s-hidden-high-growth-companies-reach-for-the-sky
“In India, meanwhile, high-growth companies are benefiting from the digital push that the country has seen in the past few years, aided by smartphone penetration. India's total smartphone user base is expected to grow to 829 million by 2022 from 500 million at the end of 2019, according to the India Cellular and Electronics Association.
Indian businesses are also helped by the country's demographics: About 65% of the country's population of over 1.3 billion is below 35 years of age. Fifty percent fall roughly into the "Generation Z" category -- below the age of 25. Many are keen to become entrepreneurs or to be employed as part of the current startup ecosystem, which is receiving a slew of incentives from the government of Narendra Modi in the form of speedy clearances and tax benefits”. 

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Significance of mRNA Technology

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Super-sized Container Ships

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Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Was Keynes a Good Stock Market Investor?


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Growing List of Financial Scandals/Disasters

How Credit Suisse got tangled in the Archegos Wall Street chaos
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/04/06/credit-suisse-archegos-capital/

Archegos Capital Management – How a Big Bad Bet Whacked the Markets

Greensill Capital promised a win-win for buyers and sellers, until it all fell apart, igniting concerns about opaque accounting practices.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/28/business/greensill-capital-collapse.html 

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Will Everyone Benefit from the Coming Economic Boom?

The soft underbelly to a looming economic boom: Millions will miss out.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/03/30/fed-inflation-bad-economy-low-wage/ 

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Bitcoin Usage in the Corporate World

Is Bitcoin Good for Business? BY WILLEM H. BUITER
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bitcoin-bad-for-business-by-willem-h-buiter-2021-03
Following its rapid rise in value, Bitcoin is now being touted as an investment that legitimate businesses would be remiss to ignore. But business leaders should stay off the bandwagon, because the cryptocurrency revolution has already failed. 



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Monday, March 29, 2021

Inflation Fears - Is this Time Different?

Fear of Inflation Finds a Foothold in the Bond Market
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/business/economy/bond-vigilantes-interest-rates.html
 
China, Long a Source of Deflation, Starts Raising Prices for the World
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-long-a-source-of-deflation-starts-raising-prices-for-the-world-11617015600
 
Related:
How Larry Summers went from Obama’s top economic adviser to one of Biden’s loudest critics
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/03/29/summers-biden-economy-inflation/ 

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Pandemic’s Impact on NYC

New York City, long buoyed by the flow of commuters into its towering office buildings, faces a cataclysmic challenge, even when the pandemic ends.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/29/nyregion/remote-work-coronavirus-pandemic.html 

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Sunday, March 28, 2021

The 1990s - A Strange Decade

The 1990s: an age without qualities by GAVIN JACOBSON
Often heralded as the best decade ever, the 1990s brought dark warnings about the future – and many have come to pass.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2021/03/1990s-age-without-qualities
“Once the euphoria of 1989 had faded, the West became burdened by nightmares of crisis, purposelessness and confusion. Rather than being a moment of triumphant release after a prolonged period of extreme tension, the 1990s became a decade of disorientation and division; a period without any of the anchoring coordinates or intellectual focus of the Cold War. Looking back at that time, there is a distinct split between the decade’s self-understanding – how it was imagined and anticipated – and the material ways in which it was actually experienced”. 

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A Global Housing Boom?


The Pandemic Ignited a Housing Boom—but It’s Different from the Last One
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-pandemic-ignited-a-housing-boombut-its-different-from-the-last-one-11615824558

‘This Is Unprecedented’: Why America’s Housing Market Has Never Been Weirder
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/why-are-housing-prices-and-rents-down/618212/

Where Have All the Houses Gone?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/upshot/where-have-all-the-houses-gone.html
“Much of the housing market has gone missing. On suburban streets and in many urban neighborhoods, across large and midsize metro areas, many homes that would have typically come up for sale over the past year never did. Even in cities with a pandemic glut of empty apartments and falling rents, it has become incredibly hard to buy a home.
Today, if you’re looking for one, you’re likely to see only about half as many homes for sale as were available last winter, according to data from Altos Research, a firm that tracks the market nationwide. That’s a record-shattering decline in inventory, following years of steady erosion”.   

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Saturday, March 27, 2021

The Danger Arising from the Gamification of Stock Market Investing

Robinhood app makes Wall Street feel like a game to win – instead of a place where you can lose your life savings in a New York minute
https://theconversation.com/robinhood-app-makes-wall-street-feel-like-a-game-to-win-instead-of-a-place-where-you-can-lose-your-life-savings-in-a-new-york-minute-156013 

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The $15 Minimum Wage Debate

Young people, who disproportionately lost jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic, could struggle to find jobs, but they may also see raises.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/15-an-hour-minimum-wage-could-further-sting-teen-employment-11616837401
“Democrats want to raise the federal minimum wage in steps to that level by 2025, from $7.25 an hour. Most states already have set a higher minimum wage. The plan also would eliminate a youth subminimum wage that allows businesses to pay teens less during the first 90 days of work.
The changes would give raises to millions of workers and lift some out of poverty, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said in studies. But it also has found about 1.4 million workers would lose their jobs over the next four years, many of them teens. “Young, less-educated people would account for a disproportionate share of those reductions,” it said in a February report on the minimum-wage proposal”.

When Amazon Raises Its Minimum Wage, Local Companies Follow Suit
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/business/economy/amazon-wage-effect.html 


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Suez Canal Blockage Illustrates the Fragility of Global Supply Chains

In Suez Canal, Stuck Ship Is a Warning About Excessive Globalization
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/26/business/ship-suez-canal.html

As massive ship remains stuck in the Suez Canal, signs of global economic toll emerge
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Future of Business Travel

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Economics at UC Berkeley

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Friday, March 26, 2021

The Case for Dividend Stocks

Yes, You Can Retire on Dividends. 10 Stocks to Build an Income Stream for the Long Haul.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/yes-you-can-retire-on-dividends-10-stocks-to-build-an-income-stream-for-the-long-haul-51616752801 

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Bangladesh at 50: A Success Story?




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Research in Development Economics

The Absent Voices of Development Economics
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/why-does-the-global-north-dominate-development-economics-by-arvind-subramanian-and-devesh-kapur-2021-03
“To preempt the Global North’s monopoly of knowledge creation in development economics requires, first, recognizing that the Global South has ceded dominance as much as the North’s elite institutions have appropriated it. Many developing countries have severely undermined their own universities and knowledge-production systems both through lack of funding and political interference, with the latter being especially pernicious in the social sciences. Unless they remedy this, they will continue to suffer the consequences of the global imbalance”. 

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Goodhart’s Law Rules

Goodhart’s Law Rules the Modern World. Here Are Nine Examples
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-26/goodhart-s-law-rules-the-modern-world-here-are-nine-examples
“Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.” True. 

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Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis and Recent Market Movements

This Bull Market Has a Troubling Reliance on Speculation
https://www.wsj.com/articles/this-bull-market-has-a-troubling-reliance-on-speculation-11616679727
Hyman Minksy’s three stages of debt help us understand the extraordinary stock market rally that began a year ago this week.
 
Related:
https://www.economist.com/schools-brief/2016/07/30/minskys-moment 

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Thursday, March 25, 2021

Post-Pandemic Instability

The Risk of Post-Pandemic Instability
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/post-covid-instability-sources-of-unrest-by-kent-harrington-2021-03
With markets, policymakers, and commentators fixated on the coming economic boom in vaccinated countries, it is all too easy to miss dangers looming on the horizon. But history (and common sense) suggests that crises like the coronavirus pandemic do not simply recede into memory.

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Grad School: Master's in Public Policy

Georgetown Master’s in Public Policy
https://mccourt.georgetown.edu/master-of-public-policy/
 
Georgetown alum pledges second $100 million gift to public policy school
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/03/25/georgetown-frank-mccourt-100-million/
“The university said half of the new donation will fund financial aid and scholarships. The rest will invest in faculty and research.
Financial aid is often a major issue for master’s degree students. Full tuition at the McCourt School for a master’s in public policy is about $54,600 a year, or more than $109,000 for the two-year program. Officials said increased aid will help draw a diverse group of potential students and enable graduates to pursue careers in public service without the burden of heavy debt”. 

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US Corporate Tax - History

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Wednesday, March 24, 2021

The Inflation Debate Gets Interesting

Just how anchored are America’s inflation expectations?
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2021/03/24/just-how-anchored-are-americas-inflation-expectations
           
How rising inflation could disrupt the world’s economic policies
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/02/10/how-rising-inflation-could-disrupt-the-worlds-economic-policies 

Hot U.S. Economy, Fresh Supply Disruptions Pressure World’s Factories
https://www.wsj.com/articles/global-factories-pay-higher-prices-as-surge-strains-supplies-11616583929

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Fiscal Stimulus and Leakage

 The reason why real world open-economy fiscal spending multiplier is typically lower than the textbook closed economy one - 

Related:
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Key 2021 Macroeconomic Debates

How 10 Prominent Economists Think About Overheating
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/24/upshot/economy-inflation.html
Stock Rally Poses Question: When Does a Bull Become a Bubble?

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Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Austin’s Booming Real Estate Market

Bucking the Pandemic, Austin Is ‘the Hottest Market in the Country’
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/23/business/austin-real-estate-rebound.html 

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Monday, March 22, 2021

Why Can't America Simplify its Tax Filing System?

Why can’t the IRS just send Americans a refund – or a bill?
https://theconversation.com/why-cant-the-irs-just-send-americans-a-refund-or-a-bill-156733
Beverly Moran notes:
“Return-free filing is not difficult.
At least 30 countries permit return-free filing, including Denmark, Sweden, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Furthermore, 95% of American taxpayers receive more than 30 types of information returns that let the government know their exact income. These information returns give the government everything it needs in order to fill out most taxpayers’ returns.
The U.S. system is 10 times more expensive than tax systems in 36 other countries with robust economies. But those costs vanish in a return-free system, as would the 2.6 billion hours Americans spend on tax preparation each year.
Maybe you’re wondering whether Congress is just behind the times, unaware that it can release us from tax preparation? Not true.
As an expert on the U.S. tax system, I see America’s costly and time-consuming tax reporting system as a consequence of its relationship with the commercial tax preparation industry, which lobbies Congress to maintain the status quo”. 

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Central Banks and Market Interest Rates

What Drives Interest Rates? Old Question Is Key to New Economics
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-22/at-the-heart-of-the-new-economics-lies-a-centuries-old-mystery
“For years, estimates of future borrowing costs have tended to be too high –- leading to projections of bigger debts, and helping deter public spending. Some worry the opposite could happen now: politicians will grow complacent about low interest rates, borrow and spend too much, then get a nasty surprise when they spike.
But there’s a school of economic thought says that governments and central banks play a bigger role in shaping interest rates than the mainstream acknowledges. Translated into practical terms, that means countries can turn their own borrowing costs into a policy choice, instead of a price that gets discovered in the marketplace.
It’s not a new idea, says Paul McCulley, the former chief economist at Pimco. “The central bank has always had more power over long rates than the consensus had thought,” he says. “They just weren’t exercising it”. 


The Fed chair, Jerome Powell, has become a popular Main Street champion. Here’s a history of the advocacy that made this possible.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/23/opinion/powell-federal-reserve-inflation.html 

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Sunday, March 21, 2021

‘Stimmies’ to Deliver a Short-Term Boost to Equities

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Saturday, March 20, 2021

NFTs - The Latest Craze



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Inflation Risk and Asset Prices: The Fed versus the Bond Market


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Friday, March 19, 2021

The Era of Bioengineering

 

Review:

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America's Middle Class

Why Do Some Rich Families Feel So Middle Class?
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-19/biden-stimulus-checks-prompt-middle-class-debate
“According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2019 American Community Survey, more than two-thirds of all U.S. households (68.6%) earn less than $100,000 a year. Those who make between $100,000-$149,999 annually account for another 15.7%, while those earning $150,000-$199,999 comprise 7.2% of households. Only 8.5% bring home more than $200,000 annually.
In other words, fewer than 16% of U.S. households earn more than $150,000 per year. That would certainly seem to put those families in the country’s elite”. 

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Asian Americans Under Attack

 

Anti-Asian racism is nothing new in America. The pandemic, and Trump, just made it worse.
https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/4/21/21221007/anti-asian-racism-coronavirus-xenophobia 
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Working Conditions at Elite Wall Street Banks

How Much Work is Too Much Work?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/19/business/dealbook/goldman-sachs-work-hours.html
Junior bankers at Goldman Sachs raise pointed questions about pay, hours and working conditions. 

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Wednesday, March 17, 2021

US Labor Market - Oddities and Puzzles

Knowledge workers who could be productive at home had an easier time than retail employees and small-business owners.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/condoleezza-rice-on-the-pandemic-year-the-inequalities-of-american-work-11616159166

The Curious Case of Hard-to-Find Workers
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-17/the-curious-case-of-hard-to-find-workers
“Edward Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research Inc., speculated March 11 in a note to clients that if workers are hard to find, it could be that their skills don’t match employers’ needs, or that people who could work are choosing to survive on extended unemployment benefits instead”.

Educated Men Are Finding More Degrees Don’t Always Bring More Jobs
 
The Role of Job Screening Technologies:
Tackle the Big Problem with Hiring Workers in 2021
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/opinion/ai-employment-bias-nyc.html
“Over the past few years, an increasing number of employers have started using artificial intelligence and other automated tools to speed up hiring, save money and screen job applicants without in-person interaction. These are all features that are increasingly attractive during the pandemic. These technologies include screeners that scan résumés for key words, games that claim to assess attributes such as generosity and appetite for risk, and even emotion analyzers that claim to read facial and vocal cues to predict if candidates will be engaged and team players.
In most cases, vendors train these tools to analyze workers who are deemed successful by their employer and to measure whether job applicants have similar traits”. 

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Fed Dot Plots – Interest Rate Forecasts


Fed Projections:




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Supply Shocks

Toyota, Honda Shut U.S. Factories as Supplies Run Short
https://www.wsj.com/articles/honda-to-close-u-s-factories-for-a-week-over-supply-issues-11615954099
 
New Houses Are Costing More as Prices Jump for Wood, Bricks
https://www.wsj.com/articles/commodities-boom-hits-home-11615973404 

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History Lesson – Margin Trading and the 1929 Stock Market Crash

Doomsayers are citing an incomplete history of the crash of 1929. Here’s what they are missing.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-17/do-margin-debt-levels-predict-a-stock-market-crash 

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Long-Term Challenges Facing the US Economy

What comes after the stimulus-fueled short-term economic boom?

He Downgraded the U.S. a Decade Ago. He Stands by It.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-17/john-chambers-downgraded-the-u-s-in-2011-and-stands-by-it
John Chambers, former chairman of S&P’s sovereign rating committee, notes:
“You’d have to say the effectiveness of governance has improved lately. That would be on the plus side. But the fiscal position has deteriorated markedly. That’s on the negative side. And the rest is pretty much the same, the real economy, the monetary settings and the external position. Neither the Republican nor the Democratic parties have shown any ability to carry out countercyclical fiscal policy in good times. It’s one thing to have countercyclical fiscal policy in bad times, but you have to have some contraction when times are good. And we haven’t seen that”. 

Manufacturing Isn’t Coming Back. Let’s Improve These Jobs Instead.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/opinion/health-care-jobs.html
Gabriel Winant notes:
“The same forces that made the country more unequal also made it more reliant on Medicare and Medicaid and, despite periodic budget-cutting pressure, these programs have grown in a way that seems irresistible in the long view.
This policy mechanism has driven employment into what the census designates “health care and social assistance,” making it the largest labor sector in the country in 2019, at about 14 percent of all jobs”.

The Robots Are Coming for Phil in Accounting
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Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Post-Pandemic Future of Cities

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What’s Wrong with Europe?

Unraveling the mystery of Europe’s uneven covid surges
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2021/coronavirus-waves-europe/
 
Why European countries have suspended AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/03/16/europe-astrazeneca-suspended-faq/
 
Persistent COVID-19: Exploring potential economic implications
https://www.bruegel.org/2021/03/persistent-covid-19-exploring-potential-economic-implications/

Mind the economic gap: Europe and the US are drifting further apart
https://www.ft.com/content/0e9396cf-13b2-4034-ab09-c2366c264f91 
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Looking Past the 2021 Economic Boom


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Bond Markets, Credit Ratings, and Emerging Market Finances

India's brawl with debt vigilantes tells bigger story
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/India-s-brawl-with-debt-vigilantes-tells-bigger-story
 
Credit-Rating Agencies Could Derail Economic Recovery
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/credit-rating-agencies-could-derail-economic-recovery-by-jayati-ghosh-2021-03
Professor Ghosh notes:
“This points to a systemic problem in international finance: the extraordinary – and undeserved – power wielded by a few private credit-rating agencies. Just three – Moody’s, S&P Global Ratings, and Fitch Ratings – control more than 94% of outstanding credit ratings. And there is significant cross-shareholding among them.
These oligopolistic firms are market movers and makers, influencing financial portfolio allocations, the pricing of debt and other financial instruments, and the cost of capital. Bolstering their authority, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has recognized them as official statistical rating organizations. And many institutional investors, required by law to hold only “investment-grade” assets in their portfolios, must abide by the rating agencies’ verdicts”.
 
Goldman, Cerberus Buy Rare Indian Junk Bond Offering 21%
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-16/goldman-cerberus-invest-in-rare-indian-junk-bond-offering-21

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The Forgotten Financial Crisis of March 2020

The Financial Crisis the World Forgot
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/16/business/economy/fed-2020-financial-crisis-covid.html
The Federal Reserve crossed red lines to rescue markets in March 2020. Is there enough momentum to fix the weaknesses the episode exposed? 

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Monday, March 15, 2021

Fads, Manias and Asset Bubbles


NFTs don't make sense, but neither does Bitcoin
https://www.cnet.com/news/nfts-dont-make-sense-but-neither-does-bitcoin/
“NFTs, like cryptocurrency, are all about speculation. Just like people buy a useless cryptocurrency for $50,000 strictly for the purpose of selling it at $100,000, people will buy an NFT of Homer Simpson meshed with Pepe the Frog for $38,000 just because they think they can sell it later for more”.

From Crypto Art to Trading Cards, Investment Manias Abound
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/13/technology/crypto-art-NFTs-trading-cards-investment-manias.html
 
How non-fungible tokens became the latest tech speculation bubble
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/mar/13/how-non-fungible-tokens-became-the-latest-tech-speculation-bubble
 
Why would anyone buy crypto art – let alone spend millions on what’s essentially a link to a JPEG file?
https://theconversation.com/why-would-anyone-buy-crypto-art-let-alone-spend-millions-on-whats-essentially-a-link-to-a-jpeg-file-157115 

NFTs, the digital bits of anything that sell for millions of dollars, explained
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22313936/non-fungible-tokens-crypto-explained 

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US Fiscal Policy - Revenue Generation

White House Weighs How to Pay for Long-Term Economic Program
https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-weighs-how-to-pay-for-long-term-economic-program-11615714201
Biden Eyes First Major Tax Hike Since 1993 in Next Economic Plan
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-15/biden-eyes-first-major-tax-hike-since-1993-in-next-economic-plan
“The following are among proposals currently planned or under consideration, according to the people, who asked not to be named as the discussions are private:
  • Raising the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%
  • Paring back tax preferences for so-called pass-through businesses, such as limited-liability companies or partnerships
  • Raising the income tax rate on individuals earning more than $400,000
  • Expanding the estate tax’s reach
  • A higher capital-gains tax rate for individuals earning at least $1 million annually. (Biden on the campaign trail proposed applying income-tax rates, which would be higher)”
Biden’s Planned Tax Hike to Hit People Earning Over $400,000 Hardest
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-15/biden-tax-hike-how-the-u-s-president-s-plan-could-affect-your-money

Yellen pushes global minimum tax as White House eyes new spending plan

TAXES AND GROWTH - INSIGHTS FROM ECONOMIC RESEARCH
The Truth About Taxes and Economic Growth
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40722179

What Do Cross-Country Studies Teach about Government Involvement, Prosperity, and Economic Growth? By Joel Slemrod
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/1995b_bpea_slemrod_gale_easterly.pdf
 
Effects of Income Tax Changes on Economic Growth
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/09_Effects_Income_Tax_Changes_Economic_Growth_Gale_Samwick_.pdf

Quality of Government and Why It Truly Matters
https://www.milkenreview.org/articles/quality-of-government


Political Economy of Taxation - The Laffer Curve Debate
The Secret to America’s Low, Low Taxes
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-06/the-u-s-isn-t-the-world-s-most-taxed-country-not-even-close
Privatize health care and run a big deficit and your country, too, can have low taxes.

Historical Perspective on 'Laffer Curve':
https://qz.com/895785/laffer-curve-everything-trump-and-republicans-get-wrong-about-trickle-down-economics-and-reaganomics/
Gwynn Guilford notes:
“Laffer’s supply-side logic served as the intellectual cornerstone for Reagan’s tax cuts, marking a turning point in conservative ideology. Up until this point, Republican orthodoxy was mostly focused on avoiding fiscal deficits. The GOP was even fine with raising taxes as long as the government covered its expenses. Economists and liberal politicians saw tax cuts as a way to tuck some extra cash into workers’ pockets, encouraging them to consume—which, in turn, boosted growth. But many old-school Republicans scoffed at Laffer’s trickle-down theories. The most famous example of this came during the GOP primary, when George H.W. Bush dubbed Reagan’s supply-side ideology “voodoo economics.””
 
Bruce Bartlett (served as domestic policy adviser to Reagan) on the Laffer Curve:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2155974
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2155978
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2155979

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America's Economic Policy Response to the Pandemic Shock

How the U.S. Got It (Mostly) Right in the Economy’s Rescue
Though the recession has been painful, policymakers cushioned the pandemic’s blow and opened the way to recovery.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/15/business/economy/coronavirus-economic-policy.html

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Key Macro/Monetary Issues

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Sunday, March 14, 2021

Higher Education and the Labor Market

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Singapore Emerges as Asia's Private Banking Capital

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Western Hypocrisy - UK Government’s Abuse of Power

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Labor Saving Technologies and Domestic Work

How Job-Killing Technologies Liberated Women
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-14/women-s-liberation-started-with-job-killing-inventions
Inventors of labor-saving devices rarely set out to lighten the burdens of domestic work, but that’s what they ended up doing. 

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The Last Oil Boom

Gulf Arab States Should Make the Most of Oil’s Last Boom
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-12/gulf-states-should-make-the-most-of-oil-s-last-boom
A spike in prices promises one final windfall before the inevitable long-term decline.

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Saturday, March 13, 2021

Florida's Growth Prospects - A Reality Check

Homebuyers Are Heading to Florida During Covid, but Nearly as Many Are Moving Out
https://www.wsj.com/articles/people-moving-to-florida-during-covid-11615463911
Thanks to hurricanes, heat and red-hot home prices, the state’s population growth hit its lowest rate since 2014 during the pandemic 


‘I’d Much Rather Be in Florida’
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/13/us/coronavirus-florida-booming.html
“Spring breakers flock to the beaches. Cars cram the highways. Weekend restaurant reservations have almost become necessary again. Banners on Miami Beach read “Vacation responsibly,” the subtext being, Of course you’re going to vacation. …
Florida reopened months before much of the rest of the nation, which only in recent days has begun to emerge from the better part of a year under lockdown”.

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AI and the Future of Entertainment

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Asset Market Frenzy

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Pfizer's Stock Price

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Return of Big Government?

The Coronavirus Killed the Gospel of Small Government
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/opinion/coronavirus-economy-government.html 
Two Decades After the ‘End of Welfare,’ Democrats Are Changing Direction
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/13/business/economy/child-poverty-stimulus.html

Related:
In the shadow of its exceptionalism, America fails to invest in the basics
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2021/america-growing-disparities/

The debate should be about the quality – not the size – of government
https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/513007-the-debate-should-be-about-the-quality-not-size-of-government 

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The Case for Economic Optimism

17 Reasons to Let the Economic Optimism Begin
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/13/upshot/economy-optimism-boom.html 

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Wealth, Merit, and Access to High Quality Education

Elite schools breed entitlement, entrench inequality—and then pretend to be engines of social change.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/04/private-schools-are-indefensible/618078/
“We have become a country with vanishingly few paths out of poverty, or even out of the working class. We’ve allowed the majority of our public schools to founder, while expensive private schools play an outsize role in determining who gets to claim a coveted spot in the winners’ circle. Many schools for the richest American kids have gates and security guards; the message is you are precious to us. Many schools for the poorest kids have metal detectors and police officers; the message is you are a threat to us.
Public-school education—the specific force that has helped generations of Americans transcend the circumstances of their birth—is profoundly, perhaps irreparably, broken. In my own state of California, only half of public-school students are at grade level in reading, and even fewer are in math. When a crisis goes on long enough, it no longer seems like a crisis. It is merely a fact”. 

The Case for Meritocracy
Does the white upper class feel exhausted and oppressed by meritocracy?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/opinion/sunday/white-fragility-meritocracy.html
Ross Douthat notes:
“And wouldn’t it be especially appealing if — and here I’m afraid I’m going to be very cynical — in the course of relaxing the demands of whiteness you could, just coincidentally, make your own family’s position a little bit more secure?
For instance: Once you dismiss the SAT as just a tool of white supremacy, then it gets easier for elite schools to justify excluding the Asian-American students whose standardized-test scores keep climbing while white scores stay relatively flat. Or again: If you induce inner-city charter schools to disavow their previous stress on hard work and discipline and meritocratic ambition, because those are racist, too — well, then their minority graduates might become less competitive with your own kids in the college-admissions race as well”. 

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Will Digitalization Boost Financial Access in India?

In about a decade, India has built digital infrastructure to improve services for hundreds of millions by way of biometric IDs and mobile phones.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-13/india-uses-digital-banking-and-biometrics-to-organize-its-1-3-billion-population
“While it began with the Manmohan Singh government, Aadhaar became the backbone of the India’s public digital infrastructure in 2014 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi combined it with his government’s Jan Dhan initiative, a financial inclusion program for India’s huge number of unbanked households. These new accounts were linked to both mobile numbers and Aadhaar, creating the Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile, or JAM. Today more than 80% of all Indians have a bank account, up from half that level when the program started”. 

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Corporate Lobbying Reaches the Academic World

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Friday, March 12, 2021

Vaccine Nationalism

Biden Takes First Tentative Steps to Address Global Vaccine Shortage
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/us/politics/covid-19-vaccine-global-shortage.html

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Taking Stock of the Pandemic Recovery

A Year Later, U.S. Is Still Charting the Long Way Back to Normal
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-covid-economy-one-year-later/ 

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American Politics

How to renew America’s democracy
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/03/13/how-to-renew-americas-democracy
 
Reapportionment, gerrymandering and the Supreme Court could help the Republicans take back the House.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2021/03/13/how-the-2020-census-may-help-republicans-regain-power-in-washington 
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Property Taxes in America

Homes in poor neighborhoods are taxed at roughly twice the rate of those in rich areas, study shows.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/03/12/property-tax-regressive/
“In theory, all homeowners in a given jurisdiction are subject to the same property tax rate, regardless of home value. But the methodology cities use to assess property values skews the final effective tax rates dramatically: Some homes are assigned considerably lower assessments than their actual market prices, while others are given much higher valuations.
These measurement errors aren’t random, according to study author Christopher Berry of the Harris School of Public Policy. Across the country, in city after city, homes in low-income neighborhoods are systematically over-assessed relative to their actual market prices, while those in rich areas are under-assessed. The net result is a transfer of billions of dollars of tax burdens from rich households to poor ones”. 

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Thursday, March 11, 2021

Inter-State Competition

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The Korean Wave Reaches India

South Korean television series are having surprising successes on streaming services in India. The phenomenon has even prompted many Indians to learn Korean.
https://www.dw.com/en/korean-tv-dramas-find-a-huge-audience-in-india/a-56815880 

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Stock Markets - The Rotation Trade

Companies That Rode Pandemic Boom Get a Reality Check
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/technology/pandemic-boom-stocks.html

‘Sell Tesla, Buy Exxon’ Explains the Market
“Cyclical stocks, those most sensitive to short-run economic growth, have been doing well since Covid-19 vaccines raised hopes of economic reopening. The stimulus trade accelerated in February as it became clear that President Biden’s $1.9 trillion package would pass. Cyclical stocks such as airlines and oil companies, commodities such as oil and copper, and bond yields all soared”.

The oil industry, known for boom-bust cycles, is resisting the temptation to pump more oil — for now.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/business/energy-environment/oil-prices-opec-shale.html
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Wednesday, March 10, 2021

US Economy - 2021 Growth Expectations

U.S. Economy Will Recover Twice as Fast Thanks To $1.9 Trillion Stimulus and Quick Vaccine Rollout
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2021/03/09/us-economy-will-recover-twice-as-fast-thanks-to-19-trillion-stimulus-and-quick-vaccine-rollout/ 

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Tuesday, March 9, 2021

Human Capital - Retaining Homegrown Talent

What happens when Asia's best and brightest stay at home?
https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/What-happens-when-Asia-s-best-and-brightest-stay-at-home 

Related:

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Risk of a US-China Conflict


Graham Allison on the Thucydides Trap


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Monday, March 8, 2021

Farewell to Libor

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