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
The Economics Roundtable is sponsored by EconModel.
The Classic Economic Models cover micro, macro, and financial markets.
Mises Economics Blog
Thomas Sowell recently sat down with Peter Robinson to discuss his latest book, Intellectuals and Race. Here’s a short excerpt:
Robinson: …[N]ow you’re saying that multiculturalists [who argue for] bringing kids into [academic] institutions for which they’re ill-qualified — you take bright, hard-working, otherwise perfectly well-qualified students ...
Not very often, but occasionally he hit on something of importance.
For example, he said in the Communist Manifesto that: “The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which [ the profit system]…compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the [ profit]… mode of production.” President ...
The Fed has committed itself to maintaining its zero interest rate policy as well as quantitative easing for as long as the unemployment rate remains above 6.5 percent (and inflation rate below 2.5 percent). James Bullard, the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, heroically dissents from ...
The Mises Institute will be hosting the David Stockman Seminar in New York City on Tuesday May 21. Lew Rockwell, Judge Andrew Napolitano, and myself will be in attendance. Mr. Stockman will be talking about his hard-hitting new book on crony capitalism, The Great Deformation.
The Great ...
There is now a Wikipedia entry on William H. Peterson available here. Dr. Peterson was a student of Ludwig von Mises, a prominent business economist, and a great man.
Line of the day, from Michael Kinsley: “Krugman sometimes writes as if, right or wrong, his view is the courageous one, held by folks willing to stand up to the plutocrats and their lackies. But his message to all classes is: ...
You would not think that there would be any worthwhile ideas in an article entitled “Bring on the ‘Helicopter’ Money.” Written by hedge-fund manager Daniel Arbess in today’s Wall Street Journal, the article contains a very good idea buried among many bad ones.
Arbess argues that quantitative easing is ...
The president of the Minneapolis Fed, one Narayana Kocherlakota, decided to devote the entire 2012 Annual Report to not one but two interviews with . . . . . . . . himself. The interviews are a celebration of economic stupidity. A few excerpts:
“Quantitative easing has the impact of ...
Responding to a question after his speech in Stockholm earlier today, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser admitted that the Fed’s policy of targeting a zero interest rate “is increasingly troubling to many people on the Fed.” Plosser went on to state, “We’re very conscious of ...
I just had a long conversation with a longtime member of the Mises Institute. We discussed the economy, gold investments, and the great Burt Blumert. I thought it would be worthwhile to post Burt’s Wikipedia entry here for both all the people who admired Burt and younger members and ...