Robert Waldmann A specter is haunting Paul Krugman — it is the specter of apparently sophisticated forecasters who predict a huge spike in US long term bond rates in the near future. He notes that most investors can’t believe this or rates would already be high. He also notes that some of those who are […]

Ken Houghton notes that playing with data is dangerous. Predicting the future tends to be easy. There are several ways to do it. First, you can predict that everything will grow as it did this year—or last year, or the mean of the past x years. Or you can predict that it will be great […]

Js-kit has some comments embedded in the post, at the bottom of each post after clicking on the title of the post you want to read. There is a disconnect with the blue comment link at the top of the post (blogger comment format). Very inconvenient. Sorry. Update: Blogger and js-kit are synchronized in ‘below […]

Robert Waldmann The one by Paul Krugman is a must read. what I hear is that officials don’t trust the demand for long-term government debt, because they see it as driven by a “carry trade”: financial players borrowing cheap money short-term, and using it to buy long-term bonds. [skip] the remedy should be financial, not […]

Robert Waldmann Can the Fed do any more to stimulate the economy ? The question is back. The answer is only by making credible promises about the fairly distant future. My view is that this means no. I review the issue after the jump. Long ago Paul Krugman proposed that the Bank of Japan target […]

With all the talk of “Detroit,” you would think that Michigan would have lost the most employees, as a percentage of same, on the year. After all, the scariest graph of the U.S. MSAs isn’t scary for nothing. But the Regional and State Employment data is out for October (h/t CR), and there’s a different […]

Update:Menzie Chin weighs in: http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2009/11/the_global_surf.html

Congratulations to Andrew Samwick of Capital Gains and Games for being named Professor of the Year in New Hampshire.

[cross-posted on ataxingmatter–see posting there for additional comments] As some of you may know, I am one of the many people who eat a vegetarian diet. I don’t eat cows, pigs, fish, whales, sharks, chicken, turkey, sheep, wild game, tame game… As I sometimes say when people ask me about my diet, I eat everything […]