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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Imagine northeastern Thai street food, Issan style, combined with the quality ingredients and overall standards of fine dining. Right now it’s the best place in DC by a long ways and the best place this area has had in a long time. The tastes are sharp, hot, sour, pungent, musty, ...
Via Derek Thompson:
Elite Wall Street Donations Jumped 700% in the Last 20 Years, by Derek Thompson: Banks "frankly own the place," Sen. Dick Durbin famously said of Washington during the debate over financial regulation in 2010. And when it comes to total contributions for big donors, ...
The Treasury Department will triple payments to mortgage investors for reducing borrower principal through an expanded Home Affordable Modification Program announced Friday [CR note: Treasury will pay incentives ranging from .18 to .63 cents on the ...
Foreign banks on domestic soil have always been controversial. This column presents a newly collected, comprehensive database on bank ownership for 137 countries over the period 1995–2009. It shows that current market shares of foreign banks average 20% in OECD countries and 50% ...
Unless Greece and its creditors reach a deal in the next few days, Greece has no money to pay €15 Billion or so due to its bondholders in March.
From the start, this has been a crisis of fake legal and economic constraints masking very real political constraints. ...
The last few releases of the Fiscal Monitor show that the federal deficit is finally starting to shrink appreciably.
Here is the latest version of the graph of the 12-month moving federal deficit, updated to November 2011:German Government Calls for Greece to Cede Sovereignty to Eurozone "Budget Commissioner"
This morning the Bureau of Economic Analysis released its first estimate for 2011 GDP. It showed national output for the first time surpassing the pre-recession peak, which occurred in the last quarter of 2007. (See chart below, at the bottom.)
Given that the economy hit its trough in mid-2009, the ...
Sack Panther and Titan banks
A Patriots chore
by Soylent Green is People
From the FDIC: CenterState Bank of Florida, National Association, Winter Haven, Florida, Assumes All of the Deposits of First Guaranty Bank and Trust Company of Jacksonville, Jacksonville, Florida
As of September 30, 2011, ...
Forest Lake Friday failure
A quickening pace.
by Soylent Green is People
From the FDIC: First Resource Bank, Savage, Minnesota, Assumes All of the Deposits of Patriot Bank Minnesota, Forest Lake, Minnesota
As of September 30, 2011, Patriot Bank Minnesota had approximately $111.3 ...
From the MakeUseOf.com website:
"Have you ever watched a masterful expert perform their work with such skill and passion that you had no choice but to watch and admire in awe? As I scour the Internet from ...
Here's the offending part of his blog post:
But why is the inflation target only 2 percent?
Actually, I understand why; the inflation hawks ...
He sees 2012 as another year of lagging sales, considering the average household debt for Americans over the age of 16 comes to ...
Who hasn’t seen “The Shawshank Redemption” featuring aging convicts Red Redding (Morgan Freeman) and Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore)? The movie was set in the 1940s when most prisoners were young tough guys and of course in this case the cerebral Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins). Redding and Hatlen were finally ...
click on any chart for sharper image
Originations Decline
...
The Federal Reserve‘s inflation hawks had the greatest influence on the bond markets in 2011, even as the central bank as a whole pursued economic-stimulus measures and promised to keep interest rates ultra-low for years.
A hawk refers to an economic-policy adviser who is concerned primarily about inflation and its effects ...
Job losers in the Great Recession have had substantially more difficulty finding employment than in earlier recessions, according to Henry Farber of Princeton. Roughly fifty percent of those who lost jobs between 2007 and 2009 remained without work in 2010 and and even those full-time job losers who did ...
Impressive video of a state-of-the-art VW car factory in Germany, and this February 2009 video is now almost three years old!
Kudos to the Washington Post’s Charles Lane for his column debunking the President’s recent false claim:
THE PRESIDENT: In exchange for help — see, keep in mind, that the administration before us, they had been writing some checks to the auto ...
You will find the report here, and I thank John B. Bryant for the pointer.
Howard's remarkable life and work are summarised best in his own words. His primary concern, he explained, was "the countless small actions of unknown people" that lie at the roots of "those great moments" that enter the historical ...
The salient point is, that specifically for investors, spending is related exclusively to income, never to wealth.
It goes on to posit that QE and monetary policy are killing demand. ...
Antonio Fatás:
A matter of faith (in markets), by Antonio Fatás: Alan Greenspan contributed yesterday to the Financial Times debate about Capitalism in Crisis.The title of his article was "Meddle with the market at your peril". Not surprisignly Greenspan presents a strong defense ...
The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported today that U.S. real GDP grew at an annual rate of 2.8% during the fourth quarter of 2011. That's better than any of the previous 5 quarters, which tells you more about how disappointing the previous year and a half has been ...
The December Mortgage Monitor report released by Lender Processing Services shows mortgage originations continued their decline from 2011’s September peak, down 10.1 percent from the month before. At the same time, ...
By James Kwak
Recently, a lot of the political debate has been about whether private equity—and by extension Mitt Romney—is good or bad. The argument on one side is that private equity firms are vultures who destroy firms to make money; on the other, that private equity is just capitalism at ...
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 ...
On Monday, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation interviewed Hans Hermann-Hoppe, whom they introduce as “the world’s leading living libertarian philosopher.” Listen here!
There is still time to sign up for tonight’s webinar, How to End Unemployment in One Day.
Professor Block writes:
“If this works out well, I plan to do follow up Mises Academy presentations on environmentalism, the evils of Ronald Coase, on Austrianism, mathematical economics and econometrics, and on privatizing roads ...
Deep insight from Eugene White in this paper (HT: Scott Sumner)
The fantastically costly failures of banks and other financial intermediaries are a consequence of appallingly bad choices made by managers. To gain unseemly executive compensation, managers had incentives to exploit conflicts of interests, ...
Eric Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAffee have a new Kindle instant book out, Race Against the Machine, that very nicely describes the issues related to technological unemployment. It’s well-written, content-packed, cogently argued, usefully hyperlinked, and well worth the $3.99 they’re asking.
But ...
Portugal 10-Year Government Bond Yield
Expect ...
Five-Year Treasury Yield ...
We've extensively covered states' infatuation with using taxpayer dollars to subsidize film and television production, despite it such production companies being some of the most profitable enterprises in modern America. While in 2000 a mere four states spent $2.7 million subsidizing film and TV, by 2011 that had ...
A few comments on the GDP report:
GDP Report: Austerity is Holding Back the Recovery
The government should be supporting the recovery, but it's not.
For ...
A roundup of economic news from around the Web.
–Dovish Bernanke: Scott Sumner combs through the Fed press conference and sees evidence of a dovish chairman. ” Overall, I thought Bernanke went out of his way to suggest that Fed watchers should focus on the more dovish views, ...
For U.S. gross domestic product growth, the disappointment devil is in the details.
Real GDP grew at a solid 2.8% annual rate in the fourth quarter, slightly missing 3.0% expectations, but still the best gain since second quarter of 2010. The report, however, was a big disappointment for investors and the ...
A couple of quick notes and then some thoughts that I hope I have chance to build on over time.
GDP growth came in of course at around 2.8%. But, what does that tell us? Not much.
For example, personal consumption expenditures were weak at a 2.0% growth rate, but this is ...
Next Wednesday night, Bryan Caplan will debate Karl Smith on that topic at GMU. For background, here is a relevant short essay by Karl.
From the perspective of “common sense morality,” the poor, in wealthy countries at least, are responsible for quite a bit of their difficulties. I ...
Recently, Noah Smith had a post on the subject of economic models titled Filling a hole or priming the pump? It ...
Opposition to payouts on Greek credit-default swaps from ...
In a headline news world, sometimes it's tough to figure out what is going on:
Drudge: REAL GDP COLLAPSE: 1.7% FOR YEAR
Washington Post: U.S. economy grew at fastest pace in 18 months
Please don't read this post as any indication of my beliefs regarding the President or politics, but rather as a question about an experiment in economics:
An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had recently failed an ...
“Most farmers appreciate the president’s comments that unnecessary regulations aren’t helpful,” [said Joe Cornely, a spokesman for the Ohio Farm Bureau].
via www.dispatch.com
Biting my tongue.
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At the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) summer institute in 2007, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke challenged researchers with three questions:
How should the central ...Are airline frequent flyer miles taxable? By the strictest definition, they are compensation: instead of airlines paying customers with cash, they give them miles. Since such a cash award would be taxable, it's unusual that the miles wouldn't be. However, this is one of those things that hasn't been treated ...
Lost in the intense scrutiny of the 15 percent tax rate that Mitt Romney paid on his capital gains and dividend income is the fact that capital gains and dividend taxes are a second layer of tax on corporate profits. In other words, before a company distributes $1 of profits ...
Click on graph for larger image.
The final January Reuters / University of Michigan consumer sentiment index increased to 75.0, up from the preliminary reading of ...
U.S. businesses increased their investments as last year ended. The Commerce Department said new orders for nondefense capital goods excluding aircraft — a proxy for how much companies spend on equipment — climbed 2.9% from November. That ended two months of declines, suggesting businesses are becoming more confident amid rising ...
Economists and others weigh in on the increase in U.S. gross domestic product.
– Muddling through is the best term that can be applied to the current economic environment, even though the risks of a downturn have been reduced. By the same token, the data shows that ...
U.S. consumers think the economy is doing a bit better in January, according to data released Friday.
The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index for the end of January rose to 75 from a preliminary reading of 74 for the month and 69.9 at the end of December, according to ...
In his General Theory, J.M. Keynes argued that substandard growth, financial instability, and unemployment are caused by the fetish for liquidity. The desire for a liquid position is anti-social because there is no such thing as liquidity in the aggregate. The stock market makes ownership liquid for the individual “investor” ...
Another backward-looking economic report dispatched a fresh round of hope today for thinking that a new recession isn't knocking on our collective doorstep. The U.S. economy expanded at an annual real rate of 2.8% in last year's fourth quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That's a respectable bit ...
RBS’s award of a £963,000 bonus to Stephen Hester has provoked anger. My chart shows one reason why. In the last 12 months, RBS’s share price has underperformed the market; it has also underperformed two of its three main peers - HSBC ...
I agree with Paul Krugman on the early 80s but disagree with his characterization of the current slump.
The early-80s slump was brought on by a huge rise in the Fed funds rate, which left lots of room for cuts, and was driven by a deep slump in housing, which ...
In a recent open letter in the Financial Times addressed to "Capitalists of the World" from "Adam Smith," David Rubenstein warns about the excesses of the system Smith ...
1. The Portugal 3-year note is now yielding over 20 percent.
2. Profile of Deirdre McCloskey.
3. Is cap and trade dead in California?
4.
… is from pages 8-9 of Mark Pennington’s 2011 book Robust Political Economy:
Moreover, insofar as market failure theorists are right to focus on ‘incentive compatibility’, they fail to appy this analysis to their favoured institutional alternatives. A consistent analysis of collective action and asymmetric information problems reveals that these ...
Believe it or not, the Better Business Bureau (BBB) has been around for 100 years. Their latest infographic provides a highlight of their biggest events from the first BBB in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1912 to the release of their app in 2011.
In 1930, BBBs developed ...
byRebecca Wilder
European Daily Catch: Know Your Consumers Today’s European Daily Catch compares the aggregate implications of the reported January 1-point rise in French household confidence to the reported January stabilization of Italian consumer confidence. Specifically, French consumers could be ‘happier’ but that doesn’t necessarily mean ...
But Gingrich seems to have noticed that the key to his South Carolina landslide last weekend was overwhelming support from blue-collar and middle-class Republican voters. With those making between $30,000 and $50,000 a year, Gingrich crushed Romney by 20 points. With those making between $50,000 and $70,000, the ...
Back in November 2011, there was a part of the world that I didn't understand. The politics of monetary policy didn't make sense to me. Now the world is starting to make more sense. It's not that my understanding has changed. It's the world that has begun to change.
Specifically, John ...
|Peter Boettke|
Dalibor Rohac has a great profile on Deirdre McCloskey in the WSJ.
I invoked McCloskey on a similar point yesterday in a post at Bleeding Heart Libertarians, where I will be guest blogging throughout the spring term. One of the topics I was thinking ...
Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 2.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 (that is, from the third quarter to the fourth ...
The Jeffersonian states'-rights tradition is the key to understanding why Thomas Jefferson believed that the best government is that which governs least.
In a recent open letter in the Financial Times addressed to "Capitalists of the World" from "Adam Smith," David Rubenstein warns about the excesses of the system Smith so famously praised over two centuries ago. His claim that capitalism is what currently exists ...
How good are stock market earnings forecasts?
Well, if you go by our chart below, which we constructed by sampling data we obtained from S&P roughly one-year apart (at the dates indicated) and mostly looking one-year-ahead in time, the answer is: not good at all!
BOTH the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have recently warned that if the euro-area crisis worsens it could drag the world into another deep recession. If so, emerging economies would once again be hurt by falling exports and a drying up of capital inflows. This week’s
Yesterday's news that the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) increased last month provides another data point to consider in the debate about recession risk. Looking backward doesn't necessarily tell us what's coming, but it's clear that December's economic momentum strengthened. January and beyond, of course, remains open to ...
In mid-2009, I went on a search for ...
We’ll get GDP later this morning, but as always I don’t know that there is a whole lot to be gleaned from it. Its fairly backwards looking and typically doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know.
Its useful as a summary stat for people who are not deep in ...
Agree or disagree: "One of the leading reasons for rising U.S. income inequality over the past three decades is that technological change has affected workers with some skill sets differently than others."
According to a panel of the cream of the U.S. economics profession--Harvard, MIT, Chicago, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Berkeley--
SOCIAL SECURITY
How They Lie To Us
The Wall Street Journalin the article Newtitlement State is unhappy with Newt Gingrich’s plan to privatize Social Security. Not only does it know that “privatization” failed when Bush offered it to the country, but they understand ...
If someone were to ask me my opinion on Junk Bonds at present, fool that he would be to ask me because I know real experts elsewhere, I would say this: They are good for a speculative trade, but dumb money has arrived. Be ready to sell when the momentum ...
Readers Question: Could you please help me understand why high debt as a big percentage of GDP is bad, or at what point does it becomes bad? Japan is at something like 194%, and the UK at 500% (counting all debts and liabilities). Both countries are still waking up every ...
Industrial clusters are more important than "heroic entrepreneurs":
Jobs, Jobs and Cars, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Mitch Daniels,... Indiana’s governor, made the Republicans’ reply to President Obama’s State of the Union address. ... Mr. Daniels first berated the president for his “constant disparagement of ...
My latest column at the Christian Science Monitor takes a crack at this perennial question. Short version: You ought to add about $4.6 trillion to whatever debt figure you are using. Why? Because the United States has about $7.3 trillion in non-debt liabilities (mostly pension and health benefits), offset by about 2.7 trillion ...
Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal:
Lobbyist Scott Paul details the bounty that American tire producers now reap from the Obama administration’s tariff on Americans who buy Chinese tires (Letters, Jan. 26). He then asserts that these gains prove the tariff’s merit.
Bull.
The argument against tariffs is not that ...
• New Home Sales decline in December to 307,000 Annual Rate
• 2011: Record Low New Home Sales and 'Distressing Gap'
• New Home Sales graphs
Last week on Existing Home sales:
• Existing Home Sales in December: 4.61 ...
China is often accused of providing ‘rogue aid’. China is said to be more interested in securing natural resources, export markets, and political alliances than concerned about the development of needy countries This column looks at the data on China’s aid allocations between 1996 ...
by Chidem Kurdas
Barack Obama sounded a number of themes in his 2012 State of the Union Address this week, all underpinned by the proposition that socioeconomic ills can be solved by interventionist government in general and his administration in particular.
Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, giving the Republican rebuttal, effectively replied to ...
To support a stronger economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at levels consistent with the dual mandate, the Committee expects to maintain a highly accommodative stance for monetary ...
• Zillow Forecast: November Case-Shiller Composite-20 Expected to Show 3.2% Decline from One Year Ago
Zillow predicts that the 20-City Composite Home Price Index (non-seasonally adjusted, NSA) will decline ...
The President’s State of the Union Address included discussion of the proper level of taxation for investment income. Specifically, the President suggested it was improper for investment income to be taxed at a much lower rate than labor income. This obscures the actual taxation rates faced by investors.
Capital gains are ...
That’s the title of my piece in the Fin last week. As with my previous column, Catallaxy was out with a comment long before I got around to posting here, but it seemed to me to miss the point fairly comprehensively.
Ever since the first signs of the global financial ...
David Cameron has delivered a firm rebuke to Germany at the World Economic Forum, calling on Berlin to contribute significantly more resources and guarantees to help ...
The Tax Foundation's 2012 State Business Tax Climate Index is tool for business leaders, government policymakers, and taxpayers to gauge how their states' tax systems compare. The 56-page report evaluates 118 different aspects of state taxes and provides a roadmap for improving business tax climate in each state.
Below are ...
President Obama's proposed "Buffett Rule" reminded me of a blog I wrote a few months ago on the impact of the recession on millionaire incomes and the taxes they pay. It may sound circular, but if you are going to tax millionaires, you need millionaires to tax. But recent IRS ...
Businesses are opening their wallets wider.
Heading into 2012, U.S. companies, which had been sitting on trillions in cash, are planning to spend more on big capital projects. They are laying off fewer workers, indicating more demand for labor. Those signs are good for the overall economic outlook.
They should also send ...
Ernest Hemingway: I am getting to know the rich.
Mary Colum: I think you’ll find the only difference between the rich and other people is that the rich have more money.
It turns out that when it comes to taxes, at least, Ms. Colum, was mostly—but not entirely–right. To see why, let’s ...
Kevin Outterson writes of “Hand Sanitizers as Agent Orange”:
Over at CommonHealth, Aayesha rounds up the literature on the limits of hand sanitizers, but fails to mention the collateral damage to the skin microbiome. Alcohol-based hand sanitizers kill many bacteria, viruses and fungi, but they don’t selectively target pathogens. ...
I think this is right. As I've said, I have doubts about relying upon increasing exports as our growth policy for the future, but what the president proposed in his State of the Union address is not what I think of as Mercantilism:
• Kansas City Fed: Tenth District Manufacturing Activity Rebounded in January
The month-over-month composite index was 7 in January, up from revised totals of -2 in December and 4 in November. The composite index is an average of the production, new orders, employment, supplier delivery ...
The newly composed index of leading economic indicators increased less than expected in December, according to data released Thursday.
The Conference Board said its leading index rose 0.4% last month after a revised 0.2% gain in November, first reported as 0.5%.
The December increase was half the 0.8% increase expected by economists ...
I will create a ventriloquist puppet video with any message ...
Charles Murray made a name for himself on the right starting in the early 1980′s with his ground-breaking book Losing Ground a survey of the ...
1. Via Chris F. Masse, alligator eats capitalist.
3. Markets in everything the culture that is Japan.
4. Trade Diversion economics blog.
5. Symposium on how to fix the housing market, including me.
Steen writes ...
Interesting session with Fed yesterday! Both the ECB and the FED have now clearly showed that the changed board ...
In her State of the State speech, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) discussed the importance of broad-based tax reform:
Tax reform is critical to our state - every conversation we have with CEOs at some point drifts to our tax structure, and we have been communicating with ...
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported some good news: unemployment rates have dropped in 46 states from January 2011 to January 2012. There were four exceptions:
Illinois, which in January 2011 enacted a 67% increase in individual income taxes and a 30% increase in its corporate income ...The Federal Reserve says its chairman, Ben Bernanke, will deliver a series of lectures to students in March as part of a course at a university.
Beginning on March 20, Bernanke will lead four classes about the Fed and its role in the economy as part of a course offered to ...
Hispanics say theyve been harder hit by the economic downturn than other demographic groups but are more upbeat about the recovery and the long-term prospects for themselves and their children, according to this report by the Pew Hispanic Center.
Conservatives have swooped on this. What sort ...
There is little doubt policymakers both within the EU and without will make sure a Hellenic default is avoided. Perhaps the better question is what precedent will the deal set and how will its impact reverberate throughout global financial markets? Whether considering the first deal proposed in October 2011 or ...
Zero Hedge reports,
Yesterday the Japanese Finance Ministry made a whopper of an announcement: in the year ending March 2013, total Japanese debt will surpass one quadrillion yen, or ¥1,086,000,000,000,000. This is roughly in line with the Zero Hedge expectations that by this March total Japanese debt would surpass ...
Why are cell phone taxes so high? In the United States we tax cell phones more than beer. The usual explanations for high taxes, negative externalities and low elasticity of demand don’t seem to apply to cell phones. Our colleagues Thomas Stratmann and Matt Mitchell offer an answer based ...
While a large number of “liberal” groups, ranging from the official Democratic party outlets (the Center for American Progress) to ones that sometimes cross swords with the Administration (MoveOn, ...
There have been thousands of posts and comments across the blogosphere since Nick took Krugman to task on the issue a ...
For anyone considering the 2012 election’s importance to the future of the American judiciary, one fact stands out: next November, Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be seventy-nine years old. If ...
|Peter Boettke|
The Financial Timesfeatures an opinion piece written by the the economics working group at Occupy London that discusses how Hayek helped them understand the flaws of capitalism.
Calling on Greg Ransom to fly to London and lead a discussion group.
HT: Stephan Boehm
The race is on to see which central bank can load up its balance sheet with the most garbage the fastest.
Reader ...
Two weeks ago, we observed that the number of seasonally-adjusted initial unemployment insurance claims being filed each week was still following the same trend it has since 9 April 2011, but that it was becoming increasingly volatile, suggesting that the trend is beginning to break down:
The first graph shows New Home Sales vs. recessions since 1963. The dashed ...
A look inside the new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll points to what might be an important inflection point: Starting last November, Democrats, Republicans and independents all started saying with more frequency that they think the economy would improve over the following 12 months. Its not giant movement in any ...
This may be the most important campaign news of the day: WSJ/NBC poll shows feelings on the economy are turning up. The poll finds 37% think economy will get better in the next 12 months, highest percentage to say so in a year.
A roundup of economic news from around the Web.
–Where Are the Jobs?: Graham MacDonald presents a great series of interactive maps from the Urban Institute on employment in U.S. metro areas. “Since the Great Recession ended in June 2009, the United States has gained about 1.2 million ...
Both monetary and fiscal policymakers share one mutual problem: housing’s drag on the economy.
iStockPhotoThe lack of new construction is cutting economic growth and payrolls. Falling home prices are reducing household ...
The Financial Trust Index has been tracking public sentiment toward the financial system for more than three years. And sentiment isn’t good.
In the latest release today, the survey found that just 23% of Americans say they trust the U.S. financial system. That’s as low as the earliest months of ...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) noted on its website yesterday that in 2011, “annual totals for [layoff] events and initial claims were at their lowest levels since 2007.” Nonetheless,
ONE truth that emerges clearly from the recent history of Federal Reserve monetary-policy action is that changing central bank policy goals is like steering the Titanic. You can see where the ship ought to go, and the captain himself might do his best to pilot it there, but the nature ...
1. ...
Initial jobless claims increased last week, but so did new orders for durable goods in December. It's a mixed bag of news, but a closer look suggests that the economy's capacity for growth continues to bubble.
Consider four issues:
1. John McDonnell objects thusly to the EU-India Free Trade Agreement:
If multi-brand retailing is suddenly and without safeguard opened up to EU retailers such as Carrefour, Metro and Tesco, 1.8 million jobs may be created, but at the cost of ...
If you’re Europe, and your struggling people are called “Greeks”, and your rich people are called “Germans”, then the World Economic Forum will spend pretty much limitless amounts of time and effort on attempts to understand the dynamics between the two and (doomed) plans to try to prevent it from ...
While a business owner may make grand pronouncements that the environment or some social issue is more important than profits, what he or she is really saying is that the company ...
Toward the end of his State of the Union speech, President Obama said “I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.” Apparently, he didn’t note the immense irony of those words on the lips ...
Here is Dan Klein talking about his new book, Knowledge and Coordination:
His EconTalk episode on the book is here.
...What if, rather than presenting a long and tedious speech that would constantly be interrupted by senators and congressmen mugging for the cameras, the President sat ...
That’s what former Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun aims to do.
Sound impossible? Well, he’s already taught a class of 160,000 students. As Felix Salmon recounts:
Thrun told the story of his Introduction to Artificial Intelligence class, which ran from October to December last year. It started as a way of putting his Stanford ...
In the week ending January 21, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 377,000, an increase of 21,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 356,000. The 4-week moving average was 377,500, a decrease of 2,500 from the previous week's revised average of 380,000.
The ...The housing market is showing signs of life but slowed a touch at year end. The National Association of Realtors index of pending home sales, which tracks sales of previously owned homes based on contract signings, fell a seasonally adjusted 3.5% in December from the previous month. The decline partly ...
The U.S. government’s rescue of the financial system could last for five more years as the Treasury Department unwinds its investments in hundreds of banks and other companies propped up in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, a government watchdog said Thursday.
The Bush administration launched the financial rescue plan ...
Schumpeter thought of himself as a scientist first and foremost. He emphasized over and over that he wished to refrain from making any political judgments.
While a business owner may make grand pronouncements that the environment or some social issue is more important than profits, what he or she is really saying is that the company believes these issues are more important than its customers. The idea is ...
I got a glimpse this morning of what Lance Knobel calls Davos’s “class distinctions, even if you have a white badge” — I was invited to a breakfast meeting under the auspices of something called the Industry Partnership Meeting for Financial Services. Which reminds me of that great line ...
… is from page 63 of John Mueller’s outstanding 1999 book Capitalism, Democracy, and Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery:
From the perspective of the intellectual, then, people in business may appear small-minded, crass, menial, and even stupid – though typically they will understand their business in greater depth and finer nuance ...
It was several years ago during the Q&A portion of a presentation I was giving about the federal deficit in a VERYsocially and fiscally conservative suburb of Detroit that I was asked a simple and very sincere question:Why doesn't the federal government legalize heroin and crack and then tax the ...
Policy reactions to the Eurozone crisis are seen by many as short-sighted, incoherent, and driven by political expediency. This column disagrees. What we are seeing is a game of chicken among the key political and economic powers in Europe. As the crash looms ...
It’s time to move the World Economic Forum away from the Swiss enclave with which it has become synonymous, at least for one year. A Greek island — Arianna Huffington suggests Patmos, while Andrew Ross Sorkin is more partial to Santorini — would be perfect: ...
Just in case you're still reading Krugman's Times column or blog, take a look at Steve Landsburg's calm deconstruction of yet another Krugman blunder.
Nobel, Schnoebel--I don't waste my time anymore.
Justin Wolfers writes:
Predictably enough, I spent yesterday reading lefty blogs trumpeting Corak’s analysis, and right-leaning blogs who didn’t want to believe the inequality-mobility link, endorsing Winship. But both missed the bigger picture implications. Either you’re convinced by Corak that the data can be trusted, and that they show there’s a strong link ...
The accountant's view:
How the Big Three forgot Accounting 101, EurekAlert: The Big Three were so driven by short-term profits that they forgot – or ignored – basic accounting practices that could have helped guard against production decisions with long-term damage, according to an award-winning study ...
In the State of the Union address, president Obama featured a revival of US manufacturing as one of the keys to a secure economic future. I am skeptical, but a group at MIT sees promise in this idea (and there does seem to be evidence pointing in this direction):
Justin Fox:
Is the Next Karl Marx a Management Consultant?, by Justin Fox: Wouldn't it be nice, Francis Fukuyama writes in an article called "The Future of History" in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, if some "obscure scribbler ... in a garret somewhere" would ...
Tim Duy:
Notes on the Fed Meeting, by Tim Duy: Just a quick note today – I am swamped with classes and travel this week, and sadly cannot really do justice to the wealth of information provided today by the Fed.
The basics are well known at this ...
There are two things that I want to comment on Fed policy this evening: Transparency is overrated, and Bernanke does not understand savings.
Transparency is Overrated
Ever heard of the phrase “data overload?” Greenspan would do that verbally in his testimony to Congress, providing them with more data than they needed, and ...
There is a lot that I wanted say about the mobility debate but my views are so far out of the mainstream I wasn’t sure where to start. This post by Matt Yglesias lets me at least say something.
Washingtonian, like other regional magazines I’m familiar with, does an annual ...
From David Galbraith, via Kottke:
I’ll bet if you asked every French politician where the web was invented not a single one would know this. The Franco-Swiss border runs through the CERN campus and building 31 is literally just a few feet into France. However, there is no explicit ...