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?
Click on the chart for a larger version.
EconModel
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Angry Bear
"Slightly left of center comments on news, politics, and economics from an economist.”
Angry Bear readers are familiar with Mark’s writings:
Mark Thoma is a macroeconomist and time-series econometrician at the University of Oregon. His research focuses on how monetary policy affects the economy, and he has also worked on political business cycle models. Mark is currently a fellow at The Century Foundation, a ...
by Linda Beale
Useful information on 501(c)(4)s and 527s and the IRS’s scrutiny dilemma
A fellow tax professor at Loyola University, Ellen Aprill, has put together a useful powerpoint on the way political activity comes into play in deciding whether an organization is eligible for 501(c)(4) status or should instead be ...
by Linda Beale
The IRS tale–Times letter writers seem to get it (or at least, most of them anyway)
As I’ve noted in several posts on A Taxing Matter (see links, below), the media and right-wing “hearing” frenzy continues over the purported IRS “scandal” from “targeting” conservative groups for extra scrutiny ...
By Noni Mausa
A Nation of the Non-productive?
Over on Brad deLong’s blog, I tossed off a comment. Thought it was a throw-away, but is it really?
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Now and then for fun, I dip into the Wealth of Nations. Here’s a snippet from the beginning of Chapter III:
““A man grows rich by employing ...
by Linda Beale
How Apple avoids US taxes with shell games
Tomorrow’s Congressional hearing on the ability of major multinationals to shift profits offshore to avoid US tax (and everywhere-else tax) may finally get the attention of the American public onto a tax issue worth thinking about.
As today’s New York Times ...
by Linda Beale
Remember When the IRS Targeted Liberals?
Salon’s Alex Seitz-Wald has a story that provides additional context on the difficulty the IRS has in determining appropriate filters for political activity. See “When the IRS targeted liberals: Under George W. Bush, it went after the NAACP, Greenpeace, and even a ...
Much ado is made of the Fed’s “credibility,” which is dog-whistle-speak for its ability, willingness, and decided inclination to jump all over any (expected or imagined) whiff of that horrifying threat — inflation! — especially the most terrifying bogeyman, “wage inflation.”
You won’t, on the other hand, find “credibility” discussed when ...
Allan Marks, in a comment on a Krugman post, reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in filmdom.
Krugman’s complaining that he doesn’t understand the rules that his detractors are arguing by, and Marks suggests he watch this (55 seconds):
Is anyone else wishing our ...
Or: “Dudley Makes Mock of the Monetarists.”
In my post The Fed is not “Printing Money.” It’s Retiring Bonds and Issuing Reserves, I said:
…when the Fed gives the banks reserves and retires bonds, it’s taking on market risk/reward, replacing ...