Tuesday, August 28, 2018

Yes, Republicans Are or Are Pretending to Be Easily Grifted Morons: The Theory of Relativity: Is It Time to "Teach the Controversy"?: Hoisted from Seven Years Ago [feedly]

DeLong raises a good question, and includes a quiz with the Kucinitz essay...How up to speed is your 'scientific' bullshit detector


Yes, Republicans Are or Are Pretending to Be Easily Grifted Morons: The Theory of Relativity: Is It Time to "Teach the Controversy"?: Hoisted from Seven Years Ago
http://www.bradford-delong.com/2018/08/yes-republicans-are-or-are-pretending-to-be-easily-grifted-morons-the-theory-of-relativity-is-it-time-to-teach-the-contro.html

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Recovery Radio:Recovery Radio Podcast: Sober Service

John Case has sent you a link to a blog:



Blog: Recovery Radio
Post: Recovery Radio Podcast: Sober Service
Link: http://recovery.enlightenradio.org/2018/08/recovery-radio-podcast-sober-service.html

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Bernstein: ISDS and the US [feedly]

For those seeking general background on Investor State Dispute Settlement, check wikipedia's intro. This is an important, critical issue in developing progressive trade theory and practice. Bottom line: US corps sought immense bilateral and NAFTA (also TPP)  trade advantages by agreements endorsing the rights of US companies to  sue trading partner governments not just for Bolshevik style nationalizations, but also for any reforms that might affect their bottom line, or tax obligations to the partner. Trade agreements founded on mutual benefits were corrupted significantly by fees and other sanctions used to punish less powerful partners, who might not, for example, be able to afford the millions in legal fees to prosecute their cases in US Courts (also preferred in agreements). 

Its interesting that protests from progressives on this matter were negated by the commercial forces dominating most negotiations, but now gain ground among right wingers worried that OTHER existing and emerging "investor states" (competitors, not allies to Trump) may reciprocate.


Jared drills into the details.....


ISDS and the US
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/isds-and-the-us/

I've been touting the fact, i.e., as I understand it, that this new US/Mex NAFTA agreement just struck yesterday largely gets rid of investor dispute rules (investor state dispute settlement, or ISDS) that many progressive have long complained about. (To be clear, whether this deal is going anywhere is a whole other story; I'm skeptical.)

I'm working on a piece about how the new deal looks a lot better for workers on both sides of the border than prior agreements, but re ISDS, the very knowledgeable Lori Wallach tell me it "ends the possibility of any future U.S.-Canada ISDS cases. This is huge given major US-Canada cross investment." For Mexico, where domestic courts are less reliable, investors who want to bring a case must first exhaust domestic court and administrative remedies, before turning to new procedures that significantly raise the bar to investor compensation (the fact that the Business Roundtable is already complaining about this part of the deal is revealing in this regard). There is apparently a carve out for investments in Mexican energy production that would allow a small group of U.S. investors the same protections as in earlier agreements, but this looks to have been the negotiating price for the larger advances just noted.

My friend Jay Shambaugh, presumably implying that ISDS ain't so bad, asks the reasonable, though rhetorical (if not snarky: surely Jay, a former Obama-admin economists who's one of my go-to peeps on international trade, knows the answer). Has a company used ISDS under NAFTA to overturn a US law or regulation?

No, meaning fears about the process overriding US sovereign laws have not been realized. If that's Jay's point, it's a relevant one with which I agree.

But their are still at least two big, existing problems. First, ISDS has been used by corporate bullies of rich countries to extract millions in fines and fees from poorer countries, and not for investor takings (which would be legit) but for protections prohibited by trade deals (examples here and here). What I want to see much more in U.S. trade agreements–and Jay might agree–is less protectionism of the advanced countries' investor class and its IP and drug patents, and more lifting of standards in poor countries.

The second problem with ISDS is broader:

Through the backdoor of trade agreements, the ISDS process imposes extreme property rights' concepts rejected repeatedly by Congress and U.S. courts, such as the notion that governments should pay "regulatory takings" compensation to property owners for the right to enforce environmental, health and other safeguards that could undermine the value of their property or investment. We must not solve the problem of weak rule of law among our trading partners by having the broad public bear investment risk or by changing fundamental principles of U.S. law. Instead, investment risk must be borne by the investors themselves; it is their skin, not ours, that should be in the game.

Final point. While the US hasn't lost a case, a country is only really exposed to ISDS risk when partner countries have substantial investments in the other countries in the deal. That's why, according to Lori, "54 of the 56 NAFTA ISDS cases to date attacking U.S. or Canadian laws were brought by investors from the Canada or the U.S., not from Mexico."

Surely, this makes no sense. ISDS isn't in place–or at least it shouldn't be–to be invoked in advanced countries with mature legal systems. Let the nationally-sanctioned, highly functional court systems work it out! (Jay: agree or disagree?.)

In fact, recent journalistic research reveals speculation by financial investors in ISDS cases, wherein investors either purchase companies with the express purpose of filing an ISDS claim or directly bankrolling the cases in order to claim a share of the fine. (Investors refer to this practice as "third-party funding of international arbitration against foreign sovereigns".) Gus van Harten, a law professor who has studied these activities, finds that investors "…can get an award for billions of dollars when that award would never come out in domestic law. It's just a jackpot for speculators."

End of the day, the fact that ISDS hasn't overridden any U.S. laws is comforting and Jay's right to "ask" about it. But that doesn't mean it's non-evil!


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Sunday, August 26, 2018

The Technology Tel [feedly]

The economics of agglomeration are fascinating, and giving rise to lots of academic and government study. The tech infrastructures that both reflect, and enable, agglomeration history are like a map of changes in city and regional architectures

The Technology Tel
https://digitopoly.org/2018/08/25/the-technology-tel/

Most technology nerds know "tel" as a prefix meaning "transmission over a distance," as in telecommunications, television, or telemarketing. Most are unfamiliar with an altogether different meaning as found in the phrase "technology tel," which is the modern and digital equivalent to an archaeologist's tel.

Archaeologists define tel as a mound created by many generations rebuilding on the same location, where past efforts become foundations for new generations. This meaning of tel arises in locations that humans have inhabited for many centuries, such as the ancient cities of the Near East and Mediterranean.

Similarly, a technology tel accumulates generations of digital infrastructure built in one location, where it serves interdependent or independent functions. Technology tels exist in every major city, and though city dwellers interact with them regularly, they tend to blend into the background.

Unlike its archaeological counterpart, a technology tel accumulates material in a matter of decades or faster, which makes it possible to observe and illustrate its economic determinants. Those economics occasionally gain attention from developers and city planners, and they are worth some attention from anyone interested in the modern digital experience.

FINANCIAL DISTRICTS

Technology tels grow due to three economic factors:

• infrastructure is built in locations where the most users create the most demand,

• the presence of a prior generation lowers the cost of installing the next, and

• technical factors raise the productivity of collocating two distinct pieces of equipment.

These factors reinforce one another, keeping equipment in the same location.

Southern Manhattan contains the mother of all technology tels. Long before the era of modern technology, anyone affiliated with financial markets already crowded into the district. Then, electronics worked their way into the location to serve the industry. It is obvious why. Financial users have long been lead users of information technology, so every financial office needed equipment from the frontier. Accordingly, after the early 1980s, the district became home to LANs, laptops, servers, screens, printers, and WiFi routers. Plenty of advanced infrastructure also found its way there, both to serve the same set of users and to increase effectiveness through collocation. Many workers use the same ISPs, Internet cables, 4G antennae, LAN maintenance staff, and hosting facilities.

Although sharing is efficient, organic growth is uncoordinated and does not stress efficiency. Instead, competition induces duplicate supply. Multiple upgrades of buildings attract the best tenants, so competitive incentives induce earlier upgrades, and the cycle continues—keeping the technology tel near the frontier.

Users and equipment compete for space, driving up its price. And so arises one of the most telling symptoms of a crowded technology tel: Despite expensive real estate, some buildings house data-centers filled with servers for nearby users who demand low latency. Those datacenters also hap-pen to be in place where there is easy access to the fiber. That is as it should be. The functional value of the datacenter is highest there, which contributes to the willingness to pay for the space.

Today, crowding is visible everywhere. Data equipment, servers, and switches inhabit every closet and basement, and antennae and dishes crown the top of every building. Data lines snake through every tunnel and available duct, including Manhattan's bridges. Wires traipse every elevated path-way, especially telephone poles, if available. Aesthetics are optional. Equipment goes wherever it can fit and, in some places, where it should not have gone.

Most crowded technology tels generate spawning, that is, the movement of activity to other locations away from the technology tel, either to escape the price of space or the lack of available space. For example, today, the equipment for the electronic New York Stock Exchange and related ex-changes for high-frequency traders sits in northern New Jersey. These are organized around some datacenters, which, if you think about it, are just miniature technology tels coordinated by a manager.

Crowding and spawning are not unique to southern Manhattan. The same economics created other technology tels in many other locations. Consider the second-largest financial center in North America: Chicago. Yet again, that city contains a large network of preexisting tunnels and conduits to support an enormous knot of wires and connections. All the electronics inside the down-town loop today take advantage of it. In another parallel, part of the electronic infrastructure to support the electronic exchanges also left the financial district. Part resides at a datacenter in Arora, a western suburb, and part resides at a datacenter at 350 E. Cermak, two miles south of downtown.

The latter is a retrofitted printing building (which used to print the Sears Roebuck catalogue, among other things). It is a massive building containing nearly infinite conduits and pipes. With more than a million square feet, I see little reason to doubt its claim as one of the largest datacenters anywhere.

POLICY

The accumulated investments of a technology tel create a number of opportunities and headaches. Catalogue them as growth, neglect, and security.

Growth looks like the attractive part of a technology tel. Once started, an existing location acts as a magnet for more investment and people. For example, in the last few decades, the technology tel built around San Francisco's financial district spawned a nearby technology tel in the area south of Market Street—albeit, with some help from city planners. That area was among the seediest parts of the city during my childhood, but now it's a showcase for technology-led urban growth.

As in the case of San Francisco, organic growth often does not just happen on its own. That motivates a question: Can growth be jumpstarted in a new location by a city planner? Some cities in low-density locations have tried to do so through abatements for property and/or sales taxes, as well as expedited permitting. In recent times, this has worked with a propitious situation, namely, a location next to (transcontinental) access lines and inexpensive (overbuilt) electrical supply.

Critics of such programs note that these programs mostly attract datacenters, which create limited employment for construction work and modest employment thereafter. A moderately sized datacenter employs a few dozen people—maintenance and security staff, and a few technicians—and has limited local consequences. It mostly acts as a footloose secondary facility for backup storage for distant users. Giant warehouses and low-rise buildings (with little architectural beauty) typically do not result in a particularly attractive business district.

The addition of a few steady jobs hardly seems worth the effort and expense. So why do so? For one, if enough such buildings can be located in the same area, it can motivate investment in shared infrastructure, such as cellular towers, which spurs further investment. For two, these mini technology tels generate little traffic, meaning there will be few burdens for public administrators. Many planners in low-density locations would prefer that over nothing.

Even with such modest payoff, it is easier said than done. A thriving technology tel depends on each piece working well. Ask a city planner, and he or she will explain the challenges of lining up all the pieces. A local electrical, cable, or cellular company might fail to keep up with the frontier; a freeway exit might need repaving; or a state agency might drag its feet issuing permits.

Some difficult economic problems also can get in the way. For example, the deployment of 5G has many city planners vexed. The prior upgrade between 3G and 4G lowered the costs of deployment by using the existing rights-of-way and infrastructure, such as towers and pathways for backhaul of signals. As of this writing, however, 5G signals do not operate like 4G signals. That could drive up expenses in a local technology tel that wants to remain relevant.

Security risks raise different issues. Consider the technology tel in Ashburn, Virginia, next to Washington Dulles International Airport. That location became focal because it contained one of the original switches for the Internet, and then AOL and other dot-com wunderkinds moved in. For more than two decades, it has had a momentum all its own, with almost no spawning. Today, this location contains an enormous collection of datacenters, Internet switches, and private firms who take advantage of the connectivity, making it one of the largest technology tels in North America. Any firm trying to service the Eastern Seaboard or the federal government invests there.

Notice the historical irony. Building secure communication infrastructure in military applications provided one of several motives for DARPA to invent packet switching many decades ago. Yet, economic forces have created just about the opposite of what the military wanted: potential for a single point of technical failure due to a concentrated geographic target.

Interdependence links one failure to another in a technology tel, and this too creates potential head-aches. One of Chicago's experiences illustrates this well. In April 1992, some misplaced pile drivers in the Chicago River started a leak in a conduit tunnel, which was first discovered by a workman inspecting fiber lines running through the tunnel. The city ignored the warnings, and the unrepaired leak eventually became a flood. Many basements were served by interconnecting underground tunnels, so the flood spread. Swimming fish appeared in basements. It took a while to clean up. Settling the insurance claims was an even bigger mess.

CONCLUSION

A technology tel is propelled by the relentless urge to build and agglomerate. Crowding and spawning have become part of the landscape. Take a look around you. It is everywhere and notice-able, if you just look for it.

Copyright held by IEEE. To view the original essay click here. 


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Friday, August 24, 2018

Mid-terms- Defeat Trumpism [feedly]

Mid-terms- Defeat Trumpism
https://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2018/08/23/mid-terms-defeat-trumpism/

All Out for the Mid-terms: Democrats Must Retake the House to Put the Brakes on Trump!

Peter Olney and Rand Wilson

August 5, 2018

Stansbury Forum

Our most important political task: To flip the U.S. House of Representatives into the hands of the Democrats. Not everyone on the left agrees. Now is the time to elect Democrats – many of whom may not fit the progressive mold – in "swing districts."

Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Donald Trump, Mike Pence, photo credit: Stansbury Forum
 

"L'estate sta finendo" (The summer is ending)

"E un anno se ne va" (And a year is going by)

"Sto diventando grande" (I am growing up)

"Lo sai che non mi va." (You know I don't like that)

The popular Italian hit captures all we need to say about the coming period. Before long the summer will be over and for many of us it's time to get down to business on our most important political task: To flip the U.S. House of Representatives into the hands of the Democrats.

Not everyone on the left agrees. For example, Chris Hedges recently wrote, "The Democratic Party elites…are creations of the corporate state. The Democratic Party is as much to blame for Trump as the Republicans. It is a full partner in the perpetuation of our political system of legalized bribery, along with the deindustrialization of the country, austerity programs, social inequality, mass incarceration and the assault on basic civil liberties. It deregulates Wall Street. It prosecutes the endless and futile wars that are draining the federal budget. We must mount independent political movements and form our own parties to sweep the Democratic and Republican elites aside or be complicit in cementing into place a corporate tyranny."(1)

We don't disagree with much that Hedges says about the Democratic Party — except his last sentence. With the right wing rising, quixotic talk of "forming our own parties" or being "complicit with corporate tyranny" by supporting Democrats is pure fantasy. It completely misses the necessity of a building a united front against a dangerous far right nationalist movement led by Trump and his backers.

 

As the song says, we are getting older and hopefully a little more mature and we can understand the critical importance of putting the reins on the erratic, racist, misogynist, anti-labor monster who sits in the White House. For one of the best discussions of Democratic Party "lesser of two evils" dilemmas, we strongly suggest reading longtime DSA activist and former legislator Tom Gallagher's "The Primary Route."

Now is the time to hold our noses and elect Democrats – many of whom may not fit the progressive mold – in "swing districts." That's why we support "Swing Left," an initiative coordinating this effort that helps people find — and commit to supporting — progressives in their closest Swing District to ensure that we take back the House in 2018.(2)

This is not to understate the importance of building a strong bench of progressive candidates at the municipal, county and state level. However, the importance of those contests, often in places where differences are minimal, pales in comparison to the job of putting the political brakes on Donald Trump. The country and the earth's future will feel the impact if we fail in November.

So, we urge people to get ready to head to the "red" and "purple" districts where vulnerable House Republicans can be beat. These races are crying out for volunteers, donations and brio!

There are plenty of places to go for September and October to help organize on the ground. Make your travel plans now, because some of these districts may be crowded with folks who are setting out to do this important work.

If you can't travel, there are many other ways to take action. You can donate or host a fundraiser for District Funds to give Swing District Democrats a boost the day they become the official nominee. You can host or attend a Voter Contact Event. Or start using new phone banking technology to talk to voters in a Swing District.(3)

The authors have already made their own plans: 

Peter Olney plans to spend September and October in Southern California working on the 39th Congressional campaign of Democrat Gil Cisneros. He is running to flip this Eastern LA County/Orange County seat, which Hilary carried by 8.5% points in the 2016 election. The incumbent Republican Ed Royce has resigned, but his former aid, Young Kim is running to replace him. Peter has a strong personal interest in this project – his return to Italy is contingent on winning a Democratic majority.(4)

Rand Wilson is deciding between devoting his time to the contest for an open seat in New Hampshire's First Congressional District that could easily go Republican or campaigning for Jared Golden, the Democrats' nominee challenging Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin in Maine's 2nd Congressional District race.(5)

Regardless of the outcome of the U.S. elections in November, there is so much important grassroots organizing to do in the U.S. — and Italy. Avanti Popolo!

Notes:

1: Et Tu, Bernie? "Et ", Chris Hedges

 

 

2: Learn more at swingleft.org. According to Swing Left, there are 78 Swing Districts. These are places where the last election was won by 15% of the vote or less, where Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump, where a high concentration of volunteers could make certain districts winnable, or where other, specific circumstances make it a competitive district. Democrats need to flip at least 23 seats to take back the House in 2018. If they hold on to the vulnerable Democratic-held districts, they only need to flip 23 Republican-held House seats to take back the house in 2018.

 

3: Interested in learning more or questions about how to get involved? Contact Swing Left at host@swingleft.org.

 

4: Peter promised his Italian friends that he won't return to Italy unless we flip the House, although a return to Italy is beset with such a similar government, the product of some of the same right-wing populist forces that elected Trump.

 

5: The 2nd district backed Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election by a margin of 9 points, before flipping red in 2016 for Donald Trump (R), who won by 10 points.

[Peter Olney is retired Organizing Director of the ILWU. He has been a labor organizer for 40 years in Massachusetts and California. He has worked for multiple unions before landing at the ILWU in 1997. For three years he was the Associate Director of the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California. View all posts by Peter Olney

Rand Wilson has worked as a union organizer and labor communicator for more than twenty five years and is  currently an organizer with SEIU Local 888 in Boston. Wilson was the founding director of Massachusetts Jobs with Justice.  Active in electoral politics, he ran for state Auditor in a campaign to win cross-endorsement (or fusion) voting reform and establish a Massachusetts Working Families Party.  He is President of the Center for Labor Education and Research, and is on the board of directors of the ICA Group, the Local Enterprise Assistance Fund and the Center for the Study of Public Policy. View all posts by Rand Wilson.]


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Krugman: The Tax-Cut Con Goes On [feedly]

The Tax-Cut Con Goes On
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/opinion/obamacare-medicare-social-security-midterms-republicans.html


What will happen if the blue wave in the midterm elections falls short? Clearly, at this point it still might: Democrats will surely receive more votes than Republicans, but thanks to gerrymandering and population geography, the U.S. electoral system gives excess weight to rural, white voters who still have faith in President Trump. What if, thanks to that excess weight, the minority prevails?

One answer, obviously, is that the unindicted co-conspirator in chief will continue to be protected from the law. And for those concerned with the survival of American democracy, that has to be the most important issue at stake in November. But if the G.O.P. hangs on, there will also be other, bread-and-butter consequences for ordinary Americans.

First of all, there is every reason to believe that a Republican Congress, freed from the immediate threat of elections, would do what it narrowly failed to do last year, and repeal the Affordable Care Act. This would cause tens of millions of Americans to lose health insurance and would in particular hit those with pre-existing conditions. There's a reason health care, not Trump, is the central theme of Democratic campaigns this year.

But the attack on the social safety net probably wouldn't stop with a rollback of Obama-era expansion: Longstanding programs, very much including Social Security and Medicare, would also be on the chopping block. Who says so? Republicans themselves.


In a recent interview with CNBC's John Harwood, Representative Steve Stivers, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee — in effect, the man charged with containing the blue wave — declared that, given the size of the budget deficit, the federal government needs to save money by cutting spending on social programs. When pressed about whether that included Social Security and Medicare, he admitted that it did.

And he's not alone in seeing major cuts in core programs for older Americans as the next step if Republicans win in November. Many major figures in the G.O.P., including the departing speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, and multiple senators, have said the same thing. (Meanwhile, groups tied to Ryan have been running attack ads accusing Democrats of planning to cut Medicare funding — but hey, consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. So, apparently, is honesty.)

Now, Republicans who call for cuts in social spending to balance the budget are showing extraordinary chutzpah, which is traditionally defined as what you exhibit when you kill your parents, then plead for mercy because you're an orphan. After all, the same Republicans now wringing their hands over budget deficits just blew up that same deficit by enacting a huge tax cut for corporations and the wealthy.

So it might seem shocking that only a few months later they're once again posing as deficit hawks and calling for spending cuts. That is, it might seem shocking if it weren't for the fact that this has been the G.O.P.'s budget strategy for decades. First, cut taxes. Then, bemoan the deficit created by those tax cuts and demand cuts in social spending. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This strategy, known as "starve the beast," has been around since the 1970s, when Republican economists like Alan Greenspan and Milton Friedman began declaring that the role of tax cuts in worsening budget deficits was a feature, not a bug. As Greenspan openly put it in 1978, the goal was to rein in spending with tax cuts that reduce revenue, then "trust that there is a political limit to deficit spending."    

It's true that when tax cuts are on the table their proponents tend to deny that they'll increase the deficit, claiming that they'll provide a miraculous boost to the economy and that tax receipts will actually rise. But there's not a shred of evidence to support this claim, and it has never been clear whether anyone with real political power has ever believed it. For the most part it's just a smoke screen to help conceal the G.O.P.'s true intentions. The puzzle is why Republicans keep getting away with this bait-and-switch.


Fifteen years ago I wrote a long piece titled "The Tax-Cut Con," describing what was even then a time-honored scam; it reads almost word for word as a description of Republican strategy in 2017-18. Yet I keep reading news analyses expressing puzzlement that men who were strident deficit hawks in the Obama years so cheerfully signed on to a budget-busting tax cut under Trump. To say the obvious: These men were never deficit hawks; it was always a pose.   And the gullibility both of the news media and self-proclaimed centrists remains a remarkable story. Remember, Ryan, who was utterly orthodox in his determination to cut taxes on the rich while savaging programs for the poor and the middle class, even received an award for fiscal responsibility.

Which brings us back to the midterm elections. Rule of law is definitely on the ballot. So is health care. But voters should realize that the threat to programs they count on is much broader: If the G.O.P. holds its majority, Social Security and Medicare as we know them will be very much in danger.


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Hysteresis: Some Fairly-Recent Must- and Should-Reads [feedly]

From Brad Delong's Blog: There is a lot in the economic press now about the lagging effects of structural changes in labor force patterns during and following the Great Recession (2007).  Economists apply the term "hysteresis" --  the dependence of the state of a system on its history -- to this phenomenon.  

The literature reveals rapid redefinitions of important terms like "unemployment", "natural rate of interest" (it went negative!), the manufacturing -- services distinctions and classifications, "human capital", "public goods", "intangibles", and more take. The debates and discussions reflect the mounting data detailing the multifaceted pressures of Globalization and automation at work in nearly every economic sphere.

Hysteresis: Some Fairly-Recent Must- and Should-Reads
http://www.bradford-delong.com/2018/08/hysteresis-some-fairly-recent-must-and-should-reads.html


  • The empirical studies are finding more and more hysteresis—more hysteresis in the sense of a persistent downward shadow cast by a recession than I would have believed likely. I keep hunting for something wrong with these studies. But there are too many of them. And they all—at least all those published that cross my desk—point in the same direction: Karl Walentin and Andreas WestermarkStabilising the real economy increases average output: "DeLong and Summers (1989)... argue that (demand) stabilisation policies can affect the mean level of output and unemployment...

  • As Chief Acolyte of the "hysteresis view", I must protest! The "hysteresis view" has proved correct: Benoît CœuréScars that never were?: Potential output and slack after the crisis: "To be clear... I do believe that deep recessions can have effects on the supply capacity of the economy that may take some time to unwind...

  • We are not yet at maximum feasible employment: Jared BernsteinEmployment Breakeven Levels: They're higher than most of us thought: "We know neither the natural rate of unemployment nor the potential level of GDP...


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