Part III – How to think about time series data. For reference:Part II  Federal Spending as a Fraction of GDP Part I  Federal Spending Growth Some commentors to the previous posts have rightly concluded that I consider spending under Obama in the context of historical trends.  In fact, if you don’t consider historical trends, you […]

A post like this really shouldn’t be necessary, but part of the right wing canard that Obama has been a profligate spender is based on spending as a percentage of GDP. It looks like this – Graph 1. Graph 1.  Fed Expenditures/GDP Sure enough, by the end of Clinton’s term the ratio had fallen from […]

Jonathon Portes on macroeconomics and the deficit: As we all know, since then both the US and UK have had deficits running at historically extremely high levels, and long-term interest rates at historic lows: as Krugman has repeatedly pointed out, the (IS-LM) textbook has been spot on.  Empirically (and theoretically) well-founded? Definitely.  As Simon Wren-Lewis points […]