Economics Roundtable
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.
November Payroll Employment
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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Outside the Beltway
“Economic conditions are entirely different today than they were in Reagan’s era, and different conditions demand different policies. Those who say otherwise are simply engaging in cookie-cutter economics — proposing whatever was popular and seemed to work once, without regard to changing circumstances”—Bruce Barlett in a WaPo piece entitled ...
Since August, the unemployment rate has dropped from 9.1% to, as of the last report in January, 8.5%. Good news, without question, although incomplete given the fact that several of those monthly drops occurred because the ...
In the 1980s, Americans were bowling alone. Now, we’re living that way.
Fortune (“Solo nation: American consumers stay single“):
Americans are now within mere percentage points of being a majority single nation: Only ...
Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office released a rather grim forecast for the nation’s budget deficit and economic future:
The Congressional Budget Office on Tuesday predicted the deficit will rise to $1.08 trillion in 2012.
The office also projected ...
Employees of the US Federal Government earn substantially more in salary and benefits than their private sector comparables, according to the new Congressional Budget Office report “COMPARING THE COMPENSATION OF ...
FT management columnist Lucy Kellaway, who’s just a few years older than me, figures the best thing we middle agers can do for the young is to get the hell out of their way.
This inescapable, awkward truth has been ...
The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman explains why:
Billionaire Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett is once again thrilling the political class by volunteering other people to pay higher taxes. Long-time observers recall his opposition to former President ...
Earlier this week, Twitter announced on its blog that it now had the ability to block message from appearing in users timelines based on what country they lived in. In the post, the company said that ...
As I noted yesterday, it’s been difficult over the past several months to determine exactly what President Obama means when he talks about the so-called “Buffett Rule,” or how he proposes that it be implemented. His ...
The Commerce Department released its first estimate of economic growth in the final quarter of 2011 and, while the economic continued to expand, the pace at which it did so wasn’t very impressive:
The American economy picked ...