Economics Roundtable
Calculated Risk
Read the Bill McBride interview.
Jobs
The best summary of the state of our economy is the graph (below) of employment as a fraction of population for people over 16 years old. The decrease is large, but the most troubling feature of the graph is the flat trend .
Click on the image to get a bigger version.
June Payroll Employment
The slowndown in employment growth over the past few months is starting to become more apparent in the graph below.
Click on the image to get a bigger version.
Focus on the Problem
U.S. payroll employment peaked at 132.5 million jobs in February 2001. For April 2012, U.S. payroll employment had reached 133.0 million jobs, marking the third month in a row above the February 2001 level.
Click on the image to get a bigger version.
Graph-of-the-Year Candidates
Donald Marron likes European interest rates. Click on the image to get a bigger version. Can you find three distinct subperiods?
Brad DeLong favors the U.S. gdp gap.
Finally, it's hard to argue against the payroll employment graph below (straight from FRED) and the comparison across recessions (courtesy of Calculated Risk).
Looking Up At 2001
In February 2001, U.S. payroll employment peaked at 132.5 million. The November 2011 figure of 131.7 million still falls 800,000 jobs short of the earlier peak.
Click on the chart for a larger version.
Remember M1?
Money Supply M1 growth is now over 20% per year over a 12 month lag. M1 growth has touched 20% before, but not with excess reserves of $1.6 trillion. Where is M1 headed?
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EconModel
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Economist’s View (Mark Thoma)
Don't say you weren't warned. This is Paul Krugman, just a few days under 10 years ago:
Stating the Obvious, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times, May 27, 2003: "The lunatics are now in charge of the asylum." So wrote the normally staid Financial Times, traditionally the voice of solid ...
Gavin Kennedy follows up on a recent post from Brad DeLong on Keynes and laissez faire:
Keynes on Laissez-Faire, by Gavin Kennedy: I read the Keynes quote below in Brad Delong’s Blog:
As John Maynard Keynes shrilly stated back in 1926:
“Let us clear… the ground…. It is not true ...
George Hall and Thomas Sargent advise Republicans who support the idea of debt prioritization to "ponder the actions" of presidents Hamilton, Madison, and Grant:
Fiscal prioritisation: Lessons from three wars, by George Hall, Thomas J. Sargent,Vox EU: With the temporary suspension on the US Treasury’s statutory debt limit set to ...
Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is an optimist when it comes to our long-run economic prospects (i.e. he does not endorse the notion that productivity is slowing). I'm with him. (This is a graduation speech Bernanke gave at Bard College at Simon's Rock, Great Barrington, Massachusetts):
This is from Matt Clements, Associate Professor and Chair of the Economics Department at St. Edward’s University:
Dear Professor Thoma,
Allow me to add to the flood of responses you have no doubt received to your offer to help publicize your readers’ research. The paper is called "Self-interest vs. Greed and ...
Two from Tim Duy:
First, "Dollar Up":
Dollar Up, by Tim Duy: The Dollar continues to gain despite the supposed "Great Debaser" Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke bringing us multiple rounds of quantitative easing:
Just sayin....
And second, "Confidence Boom?": ...
Narayana Kocherlakota on how he sees the balance between keeping interest rates low for an extended time period to help with the unemployment problem (the benefit) and potential financial instability that low rates bring (the cost). He doesn't give a precise statement about how he sees the tradeoff, but does ...