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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

Download the book.

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.

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