Economics Roundtable

If the U.S. had decided to go back on the gold standard in 2006, where would we be today? That's a question my friend Randy Parker recently asked me. Here's how we both would answer.

From WSJ, Henry Pulizzi and John D. McKinnon write:

Two years ago, as part of a multi-year project, Charles Engel and I organized a conference on current account sustainability in major advanced economies. Lask week, we convened a follow-up conference aimed at updating our knowledge on this subject. Below is the latest read on the ...

The trend is clear: demand is down and complaints are up.

The newest version of the Chinn-Ito financial openness index (earlier discussed here), extending up to 2006, has just been posted. Here's the series for Argentina and for Venezuela.

From the Washington Post:

White House officials for more than a year have blocked a rule aimed at protecting endangered North Atlantic right whales by challenging the findings of government scientists, according to documents obtained by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

That's the topic of my most recent research paper. Reader warning: this is a bit more technical than the standard Econbrowser post, so if you're not a user of regression analysis, this may not be up your alley.

The Wall Street Journal had a very disturbing story on Wednesday about the "Fast and Easy" loan program of Countrywide Financial Corporation, many of whose mortgages were bought up by Fannie Mae.

The 0.6 ppt growth rate (SAAR) reported in the 2008Q1 advance release seemed to validate the President's assertion that we're not in a recession, discussed in this post.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported today that U.S. real GDP grew at a 0.6% annual rate in the first quarter of 2008, the same tepid growth rate we saw in the fourth quarter of last year.