Inflation

“Inflation,” written by Earnest Jackson and recorded by him with Sugar Daddy and the Gumbo Roux at Sea-Saint Studios in New Orleans in 1975; unreleased until 2022.

Earnest Jackson, the song’s writer and lead singer, wrote “Inflation” in the music room of Southern University and A & M College in his native Baton Rouge. Band members included guitarist Freddie Wall, bassist Randy Jackson, and keyboard player Kinny Landrum. The song never found an outlet.

Some background: Inflation in 1975 was 9%, and then-president Gerald Ford tried to fight it with a much-mocked and ineffective PR campaign called WIN (“Whip Inflation Now”).

In 2022, NPR’s Planet Money economics podcast learned of this unreleased 1975 recording, was understandably interested, and formed a record label to finally release it.

More:

“Unreleased Earnest Jackson song ‘Inflation’ becomes sensation, resonating with modern woes,” Anna Kaufman, USA Today

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Hitting the Debt Ceiling: Catastrophic for the U.S. Economy

Hitting the debt limit would be a catastrophe for the US economy, and the world. The Wall Street Journal, that radical leftist rag, explains.

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Lego As an Investment

Stocks, bonds, and …Lego bricks. That’s the investment portfolio for some. A Wall Street Journal video by Adam Adada.

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How Did Everything Get So Expensive?

Around the world, everything is more expensive. Why? Monetary factors, supply shocks, market concentration, and corporate price gouging. A Vox video by Liz Scheltens.

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Pizza Inflation Slices Through New York

The quintessential New York street food is a slice of pizza. While pizza-shaped objects appear in other cities, travelers and ex-New Yorkers have long considered the cheesy wedges of neighborhood slice joints throughout the Five Boroughs the ne plus ultra, exemplar and cornerstone of the city’s unique curbside cuisine.

Pandemic-related supplychain snags and inflation have now hit New Yorkers where they eat. The average cost for a cheese slice in the Big Apple is now 3 dollars.

More:

“Mapping the Death of NYC’s Cheap Slice,” Sarah Holder, Bloomberg

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Photo (Cheese slice, Joe’s Pizza, 14th Street, NYC) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht,NotionsCapital.com

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The Language of Power

Ha-Joon Chang explains why economics — the language of power — is too important to be left to economists. A video from the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

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Do High Heels Mean an Elevated Economy?

“Trevor Davis, a former consumer products expert at IBM, came up with a theory that matched heel length with economic upturns. ‘The index worked by analysing social media and other online sources for influencer and consumer references to shoes and boots where there was either a specific height of heel mentioned, like ‘four inches’ or a phrase that could be equated easily to a height,’ he says. ‘We then correlated that with a variety of indicators of economic performance to get the index.’ He says the data revealed that when economic indicators turned down the heel height initially went up, but if the economy remained in a recession state for more than a few months then heel heights went down.”

— “Can the ‘high heel index’ predict economic growth?” Priya Elan, The Guardian

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Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Is History Important?

If we’re headed for a recession, blame the economists who flunked history class, explains Robert Skidelsky in this video from the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

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Banning Stock Buybacks

When the Trump administration slashed their taxes, corporations invested the windfall in building new facilities and creating new jobs, right? Of course not. They spent the cash on stock buybacks. That’s good for corporate execs but a disaster for the economy. William Lazonick explains in this video from the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

More:

“Why Stock Buybacks Are Dangerous for the Economy,” William Lazonick, Mustafa Erdem Sakinç, and Matt Hopkins,. Harvard Business Review

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Davos 2020: The USA is Represented by Ivanka.

World leaders and the billionaires who own them will gather in Davos Switzerland this month for the annual World Economic Forum. The United States will be officially represented by White House Lifestyle guru Ivanka Trump and her husband, Secretary of Everthing Jared Kushner. Ms. Trump’s appearance will follow her keynote address at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show where she’ll doubtlessly talk about replacing the abused workers in her garment sweatshops with robots.  Since the Davos golf season ended in October, President Trump may not attend again this year.

More:

“Ivanka and Jared included in presidential delegation to Davos,” Matthew Choi, Politico

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Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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