Steven Greenhouse had an excellent piece in today's New York Times about sweatshops in Jordan that manufacture apparel for export to the United States. This industry has been developed largely as a result of a trade agreement that Jordan signed with the United States in the late nineties. The article describes slave-like conditions, as foreign workers routinely have their passports confiscated by factory owners so that they cannot freely leave. According to the article, workers can be forced to work up to 48 hours straight, are routinely ripped off for their pay, and are beaten if they complain. Two aspects of the article raise especially interesting questions. First, the article indicates that the apparel jobs have gone almost exclusively to foreign (largely Bangladeshi) workers. It is unlikely that the trade agreement was sold in Jordan based on the jobs that it would create for guest workers. The benefits to Jordan's economy from this trade would be very limited. Second, the Jordan...

I was struck by the reporting on the increases that the Commerce Department reported for March consumer spending and the personal consumption expenditure deflator (PCE). Both figures were presented as being higher than expected. It seems that the financial markets were surprised by the news, since the yield on 10-year treasury bills rose by 6 basis points. I am surprised by the surprise because the spending and price data released on Monday was not new information. It was actually imbedded in the first quarter GDP data that was released on Friday. The Commerce Department needed to include March data for both consumption and inflation in order to compile GDP data for first quarter data. This means that anyone who cared could have pulled out the previously released data for January and February (which is subject to revision) to calculate the numbers that would appear in the March release. I have occasionally done this myself when I had no better use of my time. Unless the first two...

It would be reasonable to think that a densely populated island with exorbitant land and housing prices would be happy to alleviate its crowding problem. That's not the thinking at the Washington Post . The Post had an article this morning noting the surprising fact that the number of obstetricians in Japan is declining along with its dropping birth rate. The article notes that Japan's population is currently shrinking, and that if current trends continue, its population will fall from over 127 million to just 100 million by 2050. The Post then describes this drop in population as a "problem." Well, fewer people, rising capital labor to ratios (and therefore higher wages), less crowding, and less pollution is not a problem in any economics I know. Maybe the Post will explain its reasoning in some future article, but for now, this front page story simply doesn't make sense. --Dean Baker

Eduardo Porter had a very good piece in the Times this morning on the huge run-up in the foreign exchange reserves of developing countries. The basic point is that these reserves are held in short-term deposits that typically pay little or no real return. In poor countries that have great need of capital, diverting money to foreign exchange reserves has a large opportunity cost. The fact, that developing countries feel that they need such large reserves is a testament to the failure of the international financial system. If the system were working well, they would have no more need of reserves at present (relative to their GDP) than they did twenty years ago. We did a short paper on this topic a few years back. It is good to see the issue finally drawing more attention. --Dean Baker

Eric Dash at the New York Times had a very good piece this morning on a backdoor $500,000 bonus that Denny's gave to its CEO, Nelson Marchioli, by allowing him to buy stock at below the market price. Of course Denny's is free to pay Mr. Marchioli whatever it feels is appropriate, but by making the payment in the form of stock options priced at below market values, it was able to conceal this payment from all but the most vigilant analysts. As the article points out, Denny's is not the only company making such surreptitious payments to its top executives. There are two important points here. First, this sort of surreptitious pay deal demonstrates a continuing problem in corporate governance. Companies are not supposed to be run for the well-being of their CEOs. If the pay could not be disclosed openly, then it is not proper, end of story. It would be reasonable for the laws to mandate that all compensation packages for top executives have to be subject to shareholder approval at...

Proponents of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge are happy to make whatever outlandish claims are convenient to advance their cause. A few years ago, they were pushing the line that drilling in the Refuge would generate 500,000-750,000 jobs, citing a study by WEFA, one of the country's leading economic forecasting firms. We did a short analysis showing the faults of this study. When WEFA refused to stand behind its study, this outlandish job claim quickly disappeared from the debate. But the nonsense continues. President Bush claimed today that the country would be producing another million barrels of oil a day if President Clinton had allowed drilling in the refuge. He presumably meant this claim to impress his audience, implying President Clinton's opposition to drilling in the refuge is a major factor behind today's high oil prices. A few simple facts indicate otherwise. First, there is a world market for oil. What matters in determining the price of oil is how much...

Last Tuesday, I pointed out that a front page Washington Post article had overstated Mexico's growth in the post-NAFTA era by a factor of five ( Mexican Deportee's U.S. Sojourn Illuminates Roots of Current Crisis , 4-17-06:A1). It appears that the Post's problems with arithmetic are continuing. The front page of the Sunday Outlook section had an article that refers to the rise to power of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia ( Old States, New Threats , 4-23-06;E1). The article comments that "social tensions have exploded as a result of the unleashing of market economies that create rapid but uneven growth." Growth in Venezuela and Bolivia may have been uneven, but it certainly was not rapid. According to data from the Penn World Tables and the World Bank, per capita GDP in Venezuela was more than 10 percent lower when Hugo Chavez took office in 1998 than it had been in 1980. In Bolivia, per capita GDP had fallen by almost 15 percent between 1980 and 2005 (see also "...