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.
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Stephen Williamson
"Stephen Williamson: New Monetarist Economics
My lastest ideas on macroeconomics, monetaryu economics, economic policy and current events”
April 12, 2013, 2:36 pm, 1075592
Not much time for blogging these days, but I thought I would contribute to this discussion by
David Andolfatto, Tyler Cowen, Paul Krugman, and
Brad DeLong.Here are the facts: (i) The short-term nominal interest rate is essentially at the zero lower bound (ZLB); ...
March 19, 2013, 6:36 pm, 1066820
The FOMC meets today and tomorrow, and will likely vote to continue with its current program of purchases of $85 billion per month in mortgage-backed securities and long-maturity Treasury bonds - "quantitative easing." A few weeks ago, Ben Bernanke publicly articulated
some of the economics behind quantitative easing. It's ...
March 13, 2013, 4:36 pm, 1064788
Alan Blinder has
a piece in the Wall Street Journal on the size of the Fed's balance sheet and why it does and does not matter. Mostly this looks fine, but at the end of the article, he discusses a possible exit strategy from some difficult choices for the ...
March 11, 2013, 10:36 pm, 1064074
Jeff Sachs characterizes himself as a progressive. He wrote
this piece on "America's New Progressive Era?" and finished it with this:
Implementation of public policy is just as important to good governance as the vision that underlies it. So the next task is to design wise, innovative, and cost-effective ...
March 10, 2013, 4:35 pm, 1063614
The Fed's balance sheet has changed in important ways - both in size and composition - from what existed before the financial crisis. As well, other elements have been added to the policy mix. Most importantly, the Fed now pays interest on reserve balances. Taken together these changes work to ...
February 17, 2013, 6:35 pm, 1056301
Jeff Lacker (President, Richmond Fed) has a
very interesting speech posted on the the role of economic theory in structuring our view of the financial crisis. Lacker gives a nice review of what we know about the theory of information, banking, and financial intermediation more generally. Then there is ...
January 16, 2013, 4:39 pm, 1045707
Jon Stewart and Paul Krugman have been butting heads over the
trillion-dollar coin idea. Stewart concludes that it is a "dumb f*****g idea," and Krugman thinks Stewart is "lazy" and "unprofessional." You can find the video
here.As someone who has called Krugman
lazy in the ...
January 15, 2013, 10:39 am, 1045176
The discussion of floor systems, between
Steve Randy Waldman and
Paul Krugman has expanded. In line with my
last post, Waldman gets it, more or less, with a little confusion. Krugman is confused.
What adds to the confusion, in part, is Krugman's example:
...what happens if ...
January 14, 2013, 6:39 pm, 1044986
The quantity of reserves held by US financial institutions is now approaching $1.6 trillion, and the Fed has promised to increase that stock by $85 billion per month for the indefinite future. Thus, it seems safe to say that the Fed will be working within a monetary regime with a ...
January 11, 2013, 4:39 pm, 1044330
If you have not run across this, you have probably been hibernating for the last few weeks. Do a search on #mintthecoin, and fill yourself in on the issue at hand. Where political conflict meets crackpot monetary economics, there is plenty of room for nonsense, of course.
The closest ...
