The United States' unemployment rate fell to 8

Probably not for most.  On-line there is easy substitutability for new content and thus price competition soon erodes away any real profit - or so it appears.  But there are a few uniquely situated news organizations that provide something a bit different: a broad range of coverage, in-depth reporting, a national

From the Oregonian's Joseph Rose's Tw

OPB has the story this morning of the Oregon Legislature first officially mandated annual session where the first order of business will likely be yet another round of cuts coming from revenues that have not kept up

Via The New York Times' Economix blog, this graph comparing private sector growth and public sector growth:

Yet another sign today that the US may be on the road to recovery: the US grew at an annualized rate of 2.8% last quarter.  This is good news considering where we have been these last few

Over at the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis, Josh Lehner has done yet another fascinating post, this time on Oregon's wood product industry.  Go there and read the entire thing, its worth

The Tax Foundation has released its latest Business Tax Climate rankings and once again, Oregon comes out looking pretty good.  The Tax Foundation considers Oregon to be the 13th best in the country, an improvement of two spots from its

I have, for all of my international groupies, added the Google Translate widget to my blogs.  Now you can read me in Portuguese, Mandarin, Swahili and the ever-popular Welsh!  Welsh really is the coolest - although if you like different scripts, check out Hindi and Arabic.  Now my fame shall know no bounds!

Trouble for the world economy. The IMF has lowered its global growth prediction to account for continuing weakness in Europe. They now predict that Europe will return to recession this year and that this contraction will pu

The Foundation for Child Dev

Recently we have seen too very different approached to the recession: big government stimulus efforts versus sharp austerity measures.  Rober Shiller weighs in on the evidence for austerity:Jaime Guajardo, Daniel Leigh,

From the Economist:

Oregon added 2400 jobs and the unemployment rate dropped to 8.9% in December.  Good news, but clouds loom on the horizon...Off to class, more thoughts later.

Catherine Rampell of the New York Times has a nice little post on what the 1% majored in.  A little surprising to me is how big a percentage are economics majors.  But this is undergraduate degrees a

Alan Krueger, the current Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors gave a speech at the Center for American Progress recently entitled "The Rise and Consequences of Inequality in the United States."  Krueger, the Princeton economics professor knows a lot about what he speaks having himself done a lot of

Probably partly due to Europe:

...more bad news.The number of Americans applying for first-time jobless benefits rose last week, the Labor Department reported on Thursday, reversing a recent decline and suggestin

From the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland (via the New York Times' Economix Blog) here is the increase in the wage premium for college d

Paul Krugman in his blog makes a point about presidential candidates who claim business experience as a major qualification for president:...running a business is nothing at all like making macro policy. The key poin

From the

The report out today from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is excellent.  200,000 net new jobs is not just a good number but a great number.  As a rule of thumb, you need at least 100,000 new jobs a month to keep up with population growth, so double that i

via

Congratulations to the Ducks.  The better team won.

I am taking a break from regular blogging for the next two weeks.  I will post occasionally when the mood strikes but otherwise I will be back to regular blogging after the new year.Have a great holiday.

Well since The Oregonian never got it on the web page, I suppose it is safe for me to do so now.  Here is my original text (its all I have in a digital version) with my addition of the word 'substantial.' As far as I can tell it is the same as was published.I have written a number of Op-Ed pieces tha

I got a little blowback from Occupy folks from yesterday's Op-Ed.  Undeserved methinks, I don't think I am alone in not understanding the message behind the port protest and worrying that they are losing the plot, but I'm glad folks are paying attention. But, since then I have had to have a root canal and m