Monetary policy is roughly the only issue on which I regularly disagree with Matt Yglesias. So it is boring to note that I agree with almost everything he wrote in his Vox article on the recently announced 0.25% Federal Funds target rate cut. His main assertions are: – it is a very reasonable move even […]
Origin of the 2 Percent Inflation Target I have made most of these comments as comments on Econbrowser and Angry Bear (an excellent post by Robert Waldman), as well as on Econbrowser in response to a serious post by Jeffrey Frankel. I note that pgl has added useful comments on this matter in the other […]
Kevin Drum notes conservative hackitude. I’m just going to fair use the whole post (please click the link so I don’t feel guilty) I would like to offer a comment on the hack gap this morning: It’s remarkable the number of liberal economists who continue to favor an interest rate cut from the Fed. They […]
Degeneration of Bipartisan Blog Sites: Econbrowser This is probably just a whiny complaint of well-known and long running issues. Indeed for a long time most blog sites (not to mention most twitterspheres and Instogram Idiotspheres) have been mono-partisan in those who participate in their discussions/debates. This has been true for a long time for most […]
Pledging Zero Carbon Emissions by 2030 or 2050: Does it Matter? We now have two responses to the climate emergency battling it out among House Democrats, the “aggressive” 2030 target for net zero emissions folded into the Green New Deal and a more “moderate” 2050 target for the same, just announced by a group of mainstream […]
Both long leading components of Q2 GDP declined UPDATED with revisions and further comments The headline number for the first estimate of real GDP in Q2 2019 was 2.1%, as I’m sure you’ve read elsewhere. As is usual, I’m not so interested in what is, after all, what the view in the rear view mirror […]
Dan here. You will be reading more of him soon…David Zetland has contributed here on water issues via Aguanomics. He now publishes his blog The one-handed economist. He is a native Californian who moved to Amsterdam several years ago. David is an assistant professor of political economy at Leiden University College, a liberal arts school located […]
Why is the 2% inflation target sacred ? A very strong case can be made that a higher target would be better, because it would mean normal nominal interest rates are further from the (near) zero lower bound. DeLong and Summers made this point in the 90s . AEA President and former IMF head economist […]
Under Trump the federal deficit has rebounded to some 4.4 % of GDP — it is the same whether you look at it quarterly or monthly data as this chart does. The monthly estimate is calculated by Haver Analytics. So much for the tax cut paying for itself. The shaded areas are by Presidential […]