Hostages to fortune Recently, I wrote a note on expected inflation in the USA. One of the two sources of data I used was the Livingston survey of expert forecasters. I used the median forecasts of the CPI 6 and 12 months ahead from the start of the survey in 1946 through 2003, when the […]
Too funny to miss, folks.
I am watchng the video of Paul Krugman on Bill Moyers. Mr. Krugman is seeing things about inequality that he hadn’t seen before Piketty’s book. So he is now seeing that inequality is a huge problem now and into the future. Inequality is the one major problem in the economy. Question… How should monetary policy […]
I haven’t beaten the drum lately for Lane Kenworthy — perhaps the best researcher out there on the economic effects of income and wealth distribution. His years of careful, diligent (and voluminous) statistical and analytic work, tapping the best data sets available, and his cogent, coherent explanations of his findings, should get a lot more attention […]
The latest numbers on 2014 taxes as share of income are out, and they’re saying pretty the same thing as last year: Above about $80K a year in income, the American tax system is not really progressive. Like, at all: The people making $100K a year pay about the same share of income at people making $10 […]
Paul Krugman has a post talking about how tighter monetary policy caused Sweden to go into deflation. Here is the chart showing their deflation. OK… we can see the deflation there far to the right. Paul Krugman talked about Sweden raising the interest rate to battle bubbles. Let’s look at the interest rate in Sweden. […]
I just watched the debate between Mark Thoma and Steve Williamson. (youtube video) As I see it, the main issue was the direction of causality in the Fisher equation. In the end, I agree with Mr. Williamson. The basic Fisher equation is… Real rate = nominal rate – expected inflation As the real rate is […]
No, I’m not talking about Piketty hitting the Times bestseller list. And it’s not just wild-eyed lefty Frenchman who are expressing concern about the state of world capital these days. Mitt Romney’s shop was beating this drum loudly more than a year ago. One of the central takeaways from Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century is […]
“There is no right more basic in our democracy than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.” That’s how Roberts began the opinion. So I guess we can now assume that the Court will strike down all those voter-ID laws that so clearly impact that most basic of rights, and will do so […]