Economics Roundtable
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.
November Payroll Employment
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?
Click on the chart for a larger version.
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EconBrowser (James Hamilton)
"Analysis of current economic conditions and policy”
Employment growth accelerates along several dimensions: nonfarm payroll, an alternative measure of nonfarm payroll, private employment, hours, and civilian employment (report here). However, JEC vice chairman Brady (JEC-Republicans) states in a press release: "Job Numbers Mask Underlying Job Weakness."
Several observers have noted that exports have increased substantially since the President made his commitment to doubling exports. [1] The most recent GDP release confirms improvement in the net exports to GDP ratio (ex. oil imports) and real exports, and a BEA release from a month and a half ...
Quick links to a few items I found interesting.
The CBO has just released the Budget and Economic Outlook. The document is full of extremely useful information, and provides a useful anodyne for some of the reality-free analyses floating around (examples here). For now, I'll just highlight two interesting graphs regarding tax expenditures:
The Fed has begun implementing its new communication strategy. Here's what the message seems to be.
That statement is from Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's State of the State address. Here are some additional remarks:
The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported today that U.S. real GDP grew at an annual rate of 2.8% during the fourth quarter of 2011. That's better than any of the previous 5 quarters, which tells you more about how disappointing the previous year and a half has been ...
So much for expansionary fiscal contraction in the UK. Not that that’s a surprise.
Given all the talk about taxes, I wondered how the Republican candidates plans stack up on the fiscal responsibility dimension, which Jeffry Frieden and I define thus:
[T]rue fiscal responsibility involves a willingness to raise sufficient tax revenue, over the longer term, to pay for the programs the government implements. Fiscal ...
Here's my suggestion for how to become rich: buy low and sell high.