What we’re reading (8/9)
“How This Economic Moment Rewrites The Rules” (New York Times). “Recessions…[in general] are about too much supply and too little demand. What the U.S. economy is facing is the opposite. Just like North Dakota in 2010.”
“Coinbase Posts Steep Second-Quarter Loss Amid Crypto Meltdown” (Wall Street Journal). “The entire sector has been badly stung by a selloff that began in November. Firms such as Celsius Network LLC and Voyager Digital Holdings Inc. have filed for bankruptcy protection. More than 20 smaller exchanges have shut down. Earlier this week, two other public crypto companies, Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd. and Marathon Digital Holdings, reported wider losses than a year ago.”
“Walmart Ponders Streaming Deal With Paramount, Disney And Comcast” (New York Times). “In recent weeks, executives from Paramount, Disney and Comcast have spoken with Walmart, the people said, as the retailer ponders which movies and TV shows would add the most value to its membership bundle, called Walmart+. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussions were private.”
“Biden’s Ongoing Struggle With The Utter Hypocrisy Of Stock Trading In Congress” (MSNBC). “The problem that Paul Pelosi’s trade illustrates isn’t new. As far back as 1789, members of Congress traded in securities affected by their official duties. This included the states’ Revolutionary War debt securities that members of Congress furiously bought up on the market at a fraction of their face value before passing a bill, the Assumption Act, paying off these same debt securities at full face value. Sen. William Maclay of Pennsylvania complained at length about this and other unethical conduct in Congress in a diary.”
The Wage Curve After The Great Recession” (David G. Blanchflower, et al., NBER Working Paper). “Most economists maintain that the labor market in the United States is ‘tight’ because unemployment rates are low. They infer from this that there is potential for wage-push inflation. However, real wages are falling rapidly at present and, prior to that, real wages had been stagnant for some time. We show that unemployment is not key to understanding wage formation in the USA and hasn’t been since the Great Recession. Instead, we show rates of under-employment (the percentage of workers with part-time hours who would prefer more hours) and the rate of non-employment which includes both the unemployed and those out of the labor force who are not working significantly reduce wage pressures in the United States…The implication is that the reserve army of labor which acts as a brake on wage growth extends beyond the unemployed and operates from within and outside the firm.”
