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

Previewing Blinder and Watson (2015)

by Mike Kimel Previewing Blinder and Watson (2015) Via James Hamilton at Econbrowser, I read about this paper by Blinder and Watson. From their abstract: The U.S. economy has performed better when the President of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance. For many measures, including […]

Open thread Nov. 30, 2013

Nicholas Watt, “Boris Johnson invokes Thatcher spirit with greed is good speech“, The Guardian 11/27/2013: Boris Johnson has launched a bold bid to claim the mantle of Margaret Thatcher by declaring that inequality is essential to fostering “the spirit of envy” and hailed greed as a “valuable spur to economic activity”.

Real Businessmen Respond to Quantity Signals, Not Price Signals

Update:  “Lord Keynes” provides a great explication of Kaldor’s theoretical work on this subject. Back in the day when I was running a high-tech conference company, we had a favorite (and actually rather cruel) interview question: “What’s the best price for a conference?” There was only one right answer: “The price that makes us the most money.” […]

Trading the gdp away…2008

Stormy wrote in 2008 a narrative for the last few decades on trade…still relevent: Trade means jobs; trade brings money into plants; trade surpluses ripple through the economy, providing not only wealth to employers and employees alike but also moneys into public coffers. Consider it “outside money” flowing into a town, county, state, or country. […]

DFAS and 8 trillion dollars and more since 1996

Via Reuter’s Scot J. Paltrow Part 1 Defense Finance and Accounting Service, or DFAS (pronounced “DEE-fass”). This agency, with headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana, has roughly 12,000 employees and, after cuts under the federal sequester, a $1.36 billion budget. It is responsible for accurately paying America’s 2.7 million active-duty and Reserve soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. […]

Inflation expections, income expectations & financial repression

The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco published a letter titled, Consumer Inflation Views in Three Countries, written by Bharat Trehan and Maura Lynch. The letter explores inflation expectations among consumers in the UK, US and Japan. Basically the story is that inflation expectations by consumers are tied to the level of oil prices and […]