Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Must-Read of the Day, non-NBER edition

Tim Duy body-slams St. Louis FRB President James Bullard: Estimates of potential GDP are not simple extrapolations of actual GDP from the peak of the last business cycles. They are estimates of the maximum sustainable output given fully employed resources. The backbone of the CBO’s estimates is a Solow Growth model. So I don’t think […]

Deja Vu All Over Again, or On the Whole…

The President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia: We have been putting out credit in a period of depression, when it is not wanted and could not be used, and will have to withdraw credit when it is wanted and can be used. But this is not Charles I. Plosser, no matter how similar […]

Texas Again: Which Rick Does More Harm?

That Rick Perry is a clueless candidate and skilled campaigner is something for Barack Obama’s minions to suffer.* That Perry’s curiosity goes no further than “Where’s My Next Corndog?” cannot be held against him; he only became what they made him, just as his predecessor did, though with a poorer transcript and lack of his […]

The Monetary Policy Debates

This article by David Leonhardt in the New York Times is getting a lot of attention. Leonhardt argues that there is an active debate in the economics profession between inflation hawks, moderates and doves and that only the position of hawks and moderates are represented on the Fed open market committee (FOMC). He guesses that […]