A month late, I learn from brilliant economist Simon Wren-Lewis about the 3.5 year late revelation of the utter contempt that then European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet had for Democracy. I hand the microphone over to brilliant economist Paul DeGrauwe The ECB’s letter to the Spanish government is not the only one the ECB […]
Mario Draghi announced European Central Bank Quantitative Easing yesterday. The plan is to buy long term public bonds for 60 billion euros a month from March at least through September 2016. Draghi said the program could be extended if inflation of slightly below 2% isn’t achieved. 60 billion a month is slightly above analysts’ average […]
Nick Rowe wonders why no one talks about price controls any more. I think this is related to his discussion of the gigantic influence of Milton Friedman on new Keynesian macroeconomics. See also this. Due to the same exchange, I recall tax based incomes policy. IIRC Paul Samuelson and especially Robert Solow were quite enthusiastic […]
There is continued discussion of how fiscal tightening in the first quarter of 2013 (the fiscal cliff in January and Sequestration in March) was followed by decent growth in the second half of 2014. I have already written much more than enough about this, but I have two more thoughts. First 2013 was not just […]
As often, Paul Krugman has an extremely interesting thought. Discussing the sudden end of the Swiss Franc Eur peg he wrote This in turn helps us put the explicit exchange rate target into the right slot: it was about making QE effective through commitment, so that you got the maximum impact on expectations. Actually, the […]
Barack Obama has released the details of a fairly radical proposal to increase tax progressivity which he will make in his state of the union address. The political impact will dwarf that of Chris Van Hollen’s proposal (which I am sad to say, has been quite dwarfish already). I am very enthusiastic about this. Even […]
This is a discussion in a comment thread which I think is worth pulling back. I claimed (as I often do) that interest rates do not have noticeable effects on consumption. Please notice the “noticeable” — it is an appeal to standard econometric analysis of aggregate time series. OK the discussion EMichael January 16, 2015 […]
David W. Brown, Amanda E. Kowalski, Ithai Z. Lurie present evidence of long term beneficial effects of Medicaid available in childhood. They consider the expansion of Medicaid and note that increased availability of Medicaid to children is correlated with higher earnings as adults. They note that this means that the Federal Government recouped part of […]
Larry Summers and Brad DeLong have even more than usually stimulating thoughts about secular stagnation and extremely low interest rates. I notice a strong focus on non residential fixed capital investment. disclaimer: I owe debts I can never repay to both of them, so this post might even be civil. Summers responds to Marc Andreesen […]
We are about to find out how the public really feels about soaking the rich and spreading it out thin. Senior House Democrat Chris Van Hollen just proposed huge changes in the tax code. The centerpiece of the proposal, set to be unveiled Monday by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), is a “paycheck bonus credit” […]