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
Asked the exact question Conservatives want to put the public in the 2017 referendum â âDo you think that the UK should remain a member of the EUâ ...
George Hall and Thomas Sargent advise Republicans who support the idea of debt prioritization to "ponder the actions" of presidents Hamilton, Madison, and Grant:
Fiscal prioritisation: Lessons from three wars, by George Hall, Thomas J. Sargent, Vox EU: With the temporary suspension on the US Treasuryâs statutory debt limit set to ...
Jeff Jarvis reprints the clip above, in an article dismissing the privacy concerns surrounding Google Glass. The Victorian attitudes of Newportâs cottagers, he clearly implies, were misguided and misplaced. âRest assured,â he writes. â I will ask you whether itâs OK ...
Here is the unofficial problem bank list for May 17, 2013.
Changes and comments from surferdude808:
As anticipated, the OCC released its enforcement action activity through mid-April 2013 this Friday. What ...
Thomas Sowell recently sat down with Peter Robinson to discuss his latest book, Intellectuals and Race. Here’s a short excerpt:
Robinson: …[N]ow you’re saying that multiculturalists [who argue for] bringing kids into [academic] institutions for which they’re ill-qualified — you take bright, hard-working, otherwise perfectly well-qualified students ...
Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is an optimist when it comes to our long-run economic prospects (i.e. he does not endorse the notion that productivity is slowing). I'm with him. (This is a graduation speech Bernanke gave at Bard College at Simon's Rock, Great Barrington, Massachusetts):
This is from Matt Clements, Associate Professor and Chair of the Economics Department at St. Edwardâs University:
Dear Professor Thoma,
Allow me to add to the flood of responses you have no doubt received to your offer to help publicize your readersâ research. The paper is called "Self-interest vs. Greed and ...
People want more jobs. Instead, the price for a coalition by former Prime Minister Mario Silvio Berlusconi was a rollback in property taxes.
Here is ...
Now here's a question--in fact, a key question, I imagine, from your perspective. What does the future hold for the working lives of today's graduates? The economic implications of the first two waves ...
âSince the I.R.S. also is the chief enforcer of Obamacare requirements, [Michele Bachmann] asked whether the I.R.S.âs admission means it âwill deny or delay access to health careâ for conservatives. At this point, she said, that âis a reasonable question to ask.â â
– Bob Unruh, Why ...
“We are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate. The reputation of the Obama White House has, among conservatives, gone from sketchy to sinister, and, among liberals, from unsatisfying to dangerous. No one likes what they’re seeing. The Justice Department assault on the Associated Press and the ...
“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.”
~Murray Rothbard ...
On Wednesday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will provide testimony on the Economic Outlook, before the Joint Economic Committee, U.S. Congress. Also on Wednesday, the FOMC minutes for the ...
Here’s a letter to an e-mail correspondent. Â I use his real name with his kind permission.
Jeremy Harris, M.D.
Dear Dr. Harris:
Thanks for e-mailing in response to my recent review of Cass Sunstein’s book Simpler. Â While I disagree with the thrust of your argument, I appreciate its civility and thoughtfulness.
The heart ...
Thomas Sowell, in his voluminous writings, is – on my understanding – sometimes wrong. Â But he’s wrong only rarely. Â Very rarely. Â And on those very many occasions when he’s right he is brilliantly insightful and impressively forceful in his argument.
… is from page 108 of Peter Drucker’s 1967 volume, The Effective Executive:
The need to slough off the outworn old to make possible the productive new is universal. Â It is reasonably certain that we would still have stagecoaches – nationalized, to be sure, heavily subsidized, and with a fantastic research ...
â From a Market Economy to a Finance Economy: The Most Dangerous American Journey
By A. Coskun Samli
Summary via publisher, Palgrave Macmillan
Dwindling innovation and deteriorating economic conditions are caused by a major force, a systemic shift ...
Two from Tim Duy:
First, "Dollar Up":
Dollar Up, by Tim Duy: The Dollar continues to gain despite the supposed "Great Debaser" Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke bringing us multiple rounds of quantitative easing:
Just sayin....
And second, "Confidence Boom?": ...
US Economics
For all the debt, there’s a shortage of bonds stks.co/cUj1 There isn’t a shortage of bonds, but of yield w/reasonable safety $$FED Very Low Inflation Panic Button: Soon DEFCON 2 stks.co/sDIg Argues that Fed will give up confident talk &continue easing $$Wake up! Neither political party cares about the rest of ...
Not very  often, but  occasionally he hit on something of importance.
For example, he said in the Communist Manifesto  that: “The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which [ the profit system]…compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the  [ profit]… mode of production.” President ...