I’m not a regular follower of durable goods orders, and I don’t generally pay much attention to whether it goes up or down in any particular month. This morning’s release was slightly more eye-catching than usual, however; durable goods orders have now fallen for three consecutive months, which starts to look more like a trend […]
Shortly after reading PGL’s healthcare post, I came across this in a Wired article, Cracking the Real Estate Code (should be available here on May 5th), by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, authors of Freakonomics. Their Wired article describes how markets can go awry in the face of significant asymmetric information, primarily noting that real […]
Has the Fed under Alan Greenspan been so sanguine about the US economy’s potential problems that its behavior verges on the irresponsible? Some economists think so, and their voices seem to be getting louder. For years now Paul Krugman has written that he thinks Greenspan is more of a cheerleader for the Bush administration than […]
That our new Sec. of State tried to bury the estimate that major world terrorist attacks tripled in 2004 is not news to the blog world. But now MSNBC is running the story via Reuters. Hopefully, a real debate on how best to fight the war on terror will finally begin. Whether this debate gets […]
This title was taken from Arnold Kling who is challenging the suggestion from AB and Kash that we do not get that much from all the money we spend on health care as compared to other nations. Arnold writes: That is, I believe that it is likely that, for the most part, Americans receive significantly […]
David Hogberg says he’s found an easy way to finance part of the $2 trillion of the Soc. Sec. transition costs: We can start with the Social Security system itself. In his book How Social Security Picks Your Pocket: A Story of Waste, Fraud, and Inequities, Joseph Fried estimates that “$71 billion per year, in […]
…seems to never end. The Japanese economy slowed last year (again), and the BoJ’s hoped-for return of moderate inflation remains an elusive goal: Drop in consumer prices pressures Bank of Japan Consumer prices fell for a seventh straight year in the 12 months to end-March 2005, confirming that the economy remains stuck in deflation in […]
Forgive me for not finishing the title here, but after reading how Brad DeLong reacted to the latest Buzzcharts, to say there could be anything right about Jerry Bowyer’s series would be a farce. Brad writes: A huge number of people who are on payrolls don’t work for corporations: 21 million of them work for […]
For the life of me, I don’t understand why a smart and honest conservative economist like David Altig would defend the Cato Institute’s claims as to the alleged benefits of privatization. To be fair, David is not saying there is some free lunch. Rather, he objects to this post from Mark Thoma by asserting that […]
When the housing boom ends, what is the possible impact on the US economy? This is a broad brush look at three major potential problems: 1) Increased Unemployment.2) Loss of mortgage equity withdrawal on consumer spending.3) Financial distress. Unemployment Last week’s post (Housing: After the Boom) looked back at the early ’90s housing bust. In […]