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.
- Recent Entries
The deadline for submissions is Septermber 2, 2013. You can read about the contest specifics here. Here is an overview:
The Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, in collaboration with the Foundation for Economic Education and the Charles Koch Foundation, is pleased to announce ...
I don't know about "everything": how many tedious meetings do they have?
As for NYU's compensation practrices, the "understandably infuriated readers" mentioned in the article should really hate this: "A Dastardly Clever Scheme".
See if you can tell from the following chart exactly when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spooked the more timid among Wall Street's professional traders by moving the goalposts closer for ending QE 4.0, the Fed's purchases of up to $45 billion per month ...
The use of promotional cars peaked in the 1920s and â30s, and while World War II restricted the growth of these ârolling billboards,â they returned as a popular means of advertising in the â60s and â70s. Whatâs more, theyâre still going strong ...
I’m getting to this a little late due to extensive travel (in South Africa now), but David Cay Johnston has a nice writeup of a recent paper on inequality based on the World Top Incomes Database. The paper, by Facundo Alvaredo et al., is important because it largely ...
by Linda Beale
The Tax Code Ain’t Nearly So Big as Often Claimed
I can’t resist pointing readers to tax professor Jim Maule’s excellent post chastising everybody–from those obviously slanted propaganda-tank tax gurus Chris Edwards (you all know him as the purported tax expert from the right-wing pseudo-libertarian Cato Institute, whose ...
When they are asked — and not when they are paid — at least when it comes to one recent study of the Swiss:
In the early 1990s, Switzerland was getting ready to have a national referendum about where it would site nuclear waste dumps. Citizens had strong views on the ...
Key points
Flash China Manufacturing PMI⢠at 48.3 (49.2 in May). Nine-month low.
Flash China Manufacturing Output Index at 48.8 (50.7 in May). Eight-month low.
China Flash Manufacturing ...
Chinaâs benchmark money-market rates climbed to records as the central bank refrained from using reverse-repurchase agreements to address a cash crunch in the worldâs second-biggest economy.
The ...
I’m not a fan of the enhanced communications of the Federal Reserve. In general, I think central banks should say nothing. Nothing. Just do your work through fed funds, and make sure you squeeze out bad debts before you stop tightening. That was the way Martin and Volcker did it, ...
It is more than a grim coincidence that Herbert Spencer, in his great book Man vs. the State, was warning of the coming slavery in 1884, and that George Orwell, in our time, has predicted that the full consummation of this slavery will ...
The line-ups for the Kazungula ferry start two or three kilometres from the water on either side of the Zambezi river. Each ...
Ross Douthat called him “the best actor in the best TV show of all time.” I consider that to be a fair description. I will never forget Tony proclaiming in one episode “He ain’t got ungatz” (sp?) and suddenly understanding what my father had meant by that many years ...
The FOMC was more hawkish than we had expected. First, Chairman Bernanke suggested that tapering would start âlaterâ this year and might conclude in mid-2014 assuming a 7% unemployment ...
Barbara Oakley, an engineering professor at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, has just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. a brilliant article on “pathological altruism.” https://mail-attachment.googleus
ercontent.com/attachment/u/0/?ui=2&ik=11da294d87&v
iew=att&th=13f5238b21339128&attid=0.1.1&disp=safe&
zw&saduie=AG9B_P9vxHlegO9Y6TcYl5o4aERi&sadet=13716
56188192&sads=Ae4o5m1UMX9s10vCJ3nHqylftzU People often act out of a desire to help others, but this by no means ensures that what they do will ...
Now we are seeing a flurry of articles with headlines suggesting reducing the monthly purchases of assets is "close" or "near". It depends on ...
TODAY'S recommended economics writing:
⢠Bernanke ignores low inflation, market doesn't (Bloomberg)
⢠Rick Perry, liberals and Texas (Matt Yglesias)
⢠Mediocrity and the civil service in China (Alphaville)
⢠Making the case for a rise in inflation (New York Times)
...After years of grim revenue news, state tax collections are surging. As they do, governors and state legislators are making decisions about how to manage the unfamiliar windfall. Some governors, including Californiaâs Jerry Brown, are husbanding resources, trying to hold down spending and paying down one-time debts. Others, such ...
There are some of you, I know, who don’t subscribe to the Counterparties email newsletter, and read it instead on this blog. That’s OK, I don’t hold it against you. But we’ve moved the newsletter off this blog now: Counterparties now has its own blog, to complement the ...
Panda Gourmet, Langdon Days Inn, 2700 New York Ave., just east of Bladensburg Road, NE, 202-636-3588.
It is in a dump of a roadside motel. You must of course ask for the secret Chinese menus, as the Chinese-American fare does not appear to be of interest. They have have a special ...
A mere hint the Fed might slow its QE program was enough to send treasury yields and the US dollar ...
Tim Duy:
FOMC Statement: First Reaction, by Tim Duy: The June FOMC statement was released minutes ago, and it sent a clear signal that the door to scaling back asset purchases was now wide open. Of course, we still await the press conference, where Federal Reserve Chairman ...
Remember last summer? The London Whale, that blockbuster adventure thriller, triggered one chill after another as the high-risk action at JPMorgan Chase was revealed. Today, the threats posed by megabanks remain just below the surface — no crisis at the moment — but they’re equally dangerous. A major sequel this ...
The Congressional Budget Office came out with a report late yesterday that cites a wide variety of economic benefits from immigration reform, a report that arguably helps the advocates of reform in the Senate ...
by Linda Beale
Going Dark–not just an SEC issue, when companies keep their tax classification secret
Today’s Times includes an interesting piece by Floyd Norris about the problem of companies that are neither private nor public but have (or claim to have) few enough public investors that the SEC allows them to ...
Country by Country Details
Passenger car sales dropped by 5.9% from May 2012 in the 27-country European Union to 1.042 million units, the lowest level since May 1993 German car sales dropped 9.9% in May, Italy was ...
What are the near-term prospects for economic growth in the industrial Midwest? In part because the Midwest is steeped in the production of durable goods, such as automobiles and machinery, its economy has long experienced more-pronounced swings over the business cycle than the overall U.S. economy. The current expansion following ...
The Congressional Budget Office analysis of the immigration reform bill moving through Congress tells us some important things. Perhaps the newsiest is this: The legislation would save a net $175 billion over a decade and another nearly $700 billion over the decade after that. This is important, too: Real GDP — ...
Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in May suggests that economic activity has been expanding at a moderate pace. Labor market conditions have shown further improvement in recent months, on balance, but the unemployment rate remains elevated. Household spending and business fixed investment advanced, ...
The Fed is clearly missing on ...
Okalipuram corporator Queen Elizabeth was granted anticipatory bail in a forgery case.
Allowing her bail plea, high court vacation judge AN Venugopala Gowda told her to surrender her passport before the trial court and execute a personal bond for Rs 50,000.
The corporator has to be available for interrogation as and when required ...
Perhaps he could write such poems in his spare time. Or perhaps better not?:
Canadaâs Parliamentary Poet Laureate, wondering aloud why the government never asks him to write poems, has inadvertently answered his own question.
âI wish that my government had asked me to write poetry about immigration policy, about Idle No ...
The software placed all the charts in the previous post after the page break.
I do not know how to fix it so go to page 2 to real the post.
In July the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), will discuss a carbon tax bill that would impose a fee on ...
George Zimmer, the founder and public face of Men’s Wearhouse since 1973, has been fired as CEO.
Bloomberg (“Men’s Wearhouse Board Fires Founder George Zimmer“):
Men’s Wearhouse Inc.’s board fired George Zimmer, the ...
There’s good news on the CitiBike front. The big problem I wrote about on June 5 — the way in which entire stations would regularly go dark, refusing to dispense or accept bicycles — seems to have been solved. This is true anecdotally: I haven’t encountered it in the ...
AP: Washington: The nation’s teacher-training programs do not adequately prepare would-be educators for the classroom, even as they produce almost triple the number of graduates needed, according to a survey of more than 1,000 programs released Tuesday.
The National Council on Teacher Quality review is a scathing assessment of colleges’ ...
With the F ed completing a two day meeting and Bernanke holding a press conference today it may be a good time to make a few comments about bond yields.
The National Park Service closed Ramp 43 in Buxton this morning to protect a nest of piping plover chicks that has started hatching.
As of late this afternoon, three chicks in the four-egg nest had hatched, according ...
In the NY Times recently, a San Francisco landlords explains why he’ll leave the apartment in his home vacant, and never rent it out again – thanks to the city’s rent control and anti-landlord housing laws.
San Francisco is going through one of its worst housing ...
From AIA: Strong Rebound for Architecture Billings Index
Following the first reversal into negative territory in ten months in April, the Architecture Billings Index has bounced back in May. As a leading ...
British capitalism is dysfunctional, and policy-makers have done little since the crisis began to repair it. This isn't (just) my opinion, but that of some monetary policy committee members. Today's minutes show that some thought that:
the benefits of further asset purchases were likely to ...
Justin Wolfers tells us to find him here. Here is one tweet:
Mankiw blog notes all-Harvard CEA now. More amazing: all CEA chairs and members since 2000 got PhD from Cambridge MA schools except 1: Stock
Earlier I noted the research of Peter Muennig, Zohn Rosen and Elizabeth Ty Wilde which proves (at all standard confidence intervals) that welfare reform killed people.  I was alarmed that almost nobody but the must read Bill Gardner noticed this research.  Now Dylan Matthews has a long excellent ...
If it weren't for the Zero Lower Bound on nominal interest rates, there would be no macroeconomic role for fiscal policy in New Keynesian models. Monetary policy alone could and therefore should be used to hit the macroeconomic target, because this leaves fiscal policy free to try to hit its ...
This is the robins' nest right outside our back door. This is the second batch (?) of babies of the nesting season. I think we might be able to enjoy one more batch (?):
The Refinance Index decreased 3 percent from the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 3 percent from one week earlier.
...
The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances ($417,500 ...
Andrew Sullivan is upset with President Obama over Syria. I’d like to consider the background question of whether individuals, upon assuming the presidency, subsequently come to look more kindly on foreign intervention (and perhaps also surveillance?) than before holding office. I can think of a few reasons why this ...
In my latest column in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, I continue to warn against the pretense of Science in policy-making.  Here’s a slice:
Because no drug is completely risk-free, and because different people have different tolerances for risk, there’s absolutely no scientifically objective way for the FDA to determine if a new ...
When reading economic articles in the past few years, you may frequently come across reference to the ‘zero lower bound’ or ZLB.
What is the Zero Lower Bound rate?
In short - when interest rates can’t fall any further below 0%
Examples of ZLB
UK interest rates were cut to 0.5% in March 2009 ...Today, we're going to demonstrate how the demands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Commission (EC) and the European Central Bank (ECB) combined together into a troika to wreck the economy of Greece in 2010.
The great divergence of returns among the major asset classes rolls on in 2013. Indeed, the range of performance has widened since the previous edition of Asset Allocation & Rebalancing Review. US stocks are still at the top of the list while emerging market equities continue to toil ...
A good post by Simon Wren Lewis on future UK macroeconomic policy – learning from the experience of the past few years. – Bold macroeconomic policy for a new government.
Essentially, it involves committing to a more flexible fiscal policy which can take into account the different requirements of liquidity ...
Chinaâs one-year interest-rate swap rose by the most in 22 months as the central bank refrained from adding funds to the financial system to ease a cash squeeze, causing demand to fall at a ...
I am biased on AIG. It was never as good as proponents of its past have said. But it was not as bad as current detractors allege.
AIG went through several eras, some of which are barely covered by this book. There was the ...
One statistic above all explains the excitement India kindles: just 18 people in every 1,000 own a car. In China the figure is 58, according to the World Bank, while in most European countries it is more than 500. âIndiaâs level of car ownership per capita is even lower than ...
The National Association of Home Builders is reporting this week that:
Builder confidence in the market for newly-built single-family homes hit a significant milestone in June, surging eight points to a reading of 52 on the National Association of ...
The very idea that the FOMC would function as faithful monetary eunuchs, keeping their eyes on the M1 gauge and deftly adjusting the dial in either direction upon any deviation from the 3 percent target, was sheer fantasy. And not ...