Economics Roundtable
Database Maintenance
Over the July 4 holiday, scheduled database maintenance will likely produce some odd reposts as the database resynchonizes to the various blog formats.
Thinking About Jobs
Jeff Frankel lays out a balanced view of the current employment statistics.
Last Month: Jeff Frankel says that the labor market has NOT yet signalled a turning point. Check the graph of weekly hours at the bottom of the page.
Clive Granger, 1934-2009
We have lost an original thinker of the first magnitude. Clive W. J. Granger.
Auctions and Politicians
Catch up on the background for one of the newest areas of Economics Engineering.
The Clark Medal: A Hindcast
David Warsh identifies the likely winners of the John Bates Clark Medal for even-numbered years. The award has, of course, been announced only in odd-numbered years. Who did we miss?
Why Card Issuers Engage In Rate-Jacking
Adam Levitin of Credit Slips explains another "benefit" of securitization. The economics of this market structure are stunningly bad.
The Geithner Plan
Will it work? Paul Krugman says no.
The New York Times'
Room for Debate
includes Simon Johnson, Brad DeLong, and Mark Toma.
Equilibrium and Meltdown
George Waters addresses the economic crisis and the state of macroeconomics.
Gzing! Gzing! Gzing!
David Warsh offers a fascinating account of the invention of earmarks. Catch his review of So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government, by Robert G. Kaiser.
Monetary Policy in Three Steps
Step 1: Buy private assets from banks while selling Treasuries, effectively trading private assets for Treasuries, leaving reserves with the Fed unchanged.
Step 2: Buy private assets from banks, paying with deposits with the Fed (new money) because the portfolio of Treasuries is shrinking. Banks make little attempt to convert deposits with the Fed into loans. Nothing much happens to loans and the money supply, but excess reserves explode.
Step 3: Banks start to expand loans on the basis of massive excess reserves. The Fed has to drain hundreds of billions in excess reserves to regain control of the money supply. The Fed does this by selling private assets back to the banks.
We are now well into Step 2. Step 3 should be interesting.
Why AIG was in the CDS Business
Felix Salmon explains how taxpayers get to pay the claims after AIG collected the premiums. It is really very simple.
VoxEU -- Free Online Book
Rescuing our jobs and savings: What G7/8 leaders can do to solve the global credit crisis -- Contents Page
Richard Baldwin, Barry Eichengreen
"Without rapid and coordinated action by G7/8 leaders, this financial crisis could turn into a jobs crisis, a pension crisis and much more. This column introduces a collection of essays by leading economists on what the G7/8 leaders should do this weekend. The dozen essays present a remarkable consensus on a few points: we need immediate, coordinated global action that includes recapitalisation of the banks."
Economic Principals
Congratulations to David Warsh on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of EP.
The First Global Financial Crisis
of the 21st Century
A VoxEU.org Publication
Edited by Andrew Felton and Carmen Reinhart
Read the announcement
and/or download selected chapters.
Review: the topic itself is important, but this book also marks a new direction for online discussion.
Great Articles by Famous Economists
The Library of Economics and Liberty includes The Concise Encyclopeida of Economics. To see how many well-known economists have contributed browse by category .
EconModel
The Economics Roundtable is sponsored by EconModel.
The Classic Economic Models cover micro, macro, and financial markets.
BusinessPundit
"Analysis on corporate strategy, economics, some occasional neuroscience, and anything else that interests me”
Business Pundit will be a little different in July. I’m going to spend the next couple of weeks sitting on an inflated device one mile beneath the earth. This is otherwise known as rafting the Grand Canyon, a once-in-a-lifetime trip that ...
The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a gang of German senior citizens who kidnapped and tortured their financial adviser:
A group of wealthy pensioners has been accused of kidnapping and torturing a financial adviser who lost about $4 million of their savings.
The pensioners, nicknamed the “Geritol Gang” by German ...
Novavax, Inc. announced today that it plans to license its vaccine technology to Spanish pharmaceutical company ROVI, who will use it to develop pandemic and seasonal flu vaccines (including one for novel H1N1). ROVI will also establish Spain’s only in-border vaccine production ...
OK! Magazine’s latest issue shows a post-heart attack Michael Jackson on the cover. Tabloid rags are always pushing past the fringes of decency to grab reader attention, but this goes too far. It would have been acceptable if Michael Jackson had survived. But please, OK! Mag, remember the man as ...
Crain’s Chicago Business has a sweet story about a potential Ferrara Pan Candy Co./Kraft Foods chocolate war:
Feeling betrayed by Kraft Foods Inc. after the nation’s largest foodmaker killed a partnership with his family’s Ferrara Pan Candy Co., Mr. Ferrara ...
The internet has made life better in an inconceivable number of ways, but at the same time there are still some things that spark nostalgia for pre-internet days. Recently I got to thinking about the mail order catalog. While it still exists, the catalog has definitely faded into the background ...
This is from an article in the St. Petersburg Times Newspaper on Sunday.
The Business Section asked readers for ideas on, “How Would You Fix the Economy?”
I think this guy nailed it!
Dear Mr. President,
Please find below my suggestion for fixing America ’s economy. Instead of giving billions of dollars to companies ...
TerreStar Corp. will launch a 7.6-ton satellite with a 60-foot antenna today, making it one of the first companies to offer satellite Internet with speeds comparable to broadband. CNN Money reports:
TerreStar Corp. (TSTR) plans to launch Wednesday the ...
