The USA is a left of center nation given the center defined by elites. This is my off topic thought (and comment) on a brilliant post on money and politics at The Monkey Cage. Ray LaRaja and Brian Schaffner note that parties give to centrist incumbents (likely to be in seriously contested seats) and argue […]

This is my FRED graph of the day post. Recently I was almost semi convinced by the Conservative argument that recent unusually rapid growth of employment fit what they said would happen if the extended unemployment insurance program ended. Then I glanced at the data on flows from unemployment to employment and noted that there […]

My http://angrybearblog.strategydemo.com/2014/07/anchored-perceived-inflation-or-how-fox-news-helped-obama.html has received more attention than I would have guessed. This should be a semi-serious post on the topic. The puzzling fact is the persistently too high forecasts of next years consumer price index inflation reported in the University of Michigan Thomson Reuters Survey of Consumer Sentiment. The median forecast has consistently been over […]

This will be a vague confused post related to the question of why the great recession didn’t lead to deflation in the USA. From 2003 through 2007 there was low CPI inflation about 2% to 3%. A huge recession, sluggish recovery and gigantic persistent output gap caused inflation to drop into the range from 1% […]

The New York Times has a wonderful graphic miss-urled How the Year You Were Born Influences Your Politics. Jon Chait points out that this URL (and a tweet) are accurate only if you are white (he doesn’t add that it only works if you are also a US citizen). I think you will enjoy clicking […]

I would like to try to critique Del Negro, Giannoni & Schorfheide (2014) “Inflation in the Great Recession and New Keynesian Models” h/t Brad DeLong. Before the jump I have to say 3 things 1) I have just skimmed the paper. I didn’t work through the equations. 2) I am very hostile to the whole […]

I’m pretty sure the title informed potential readers that this is one post to skip. If anyone was foolish enough to read this far, I must stress that I am not arguing that standard micro founded DSGE models have false implications. I am merely noting that the effort to avoid false implications demonstrates the unseriousness […]

I was not surprised to learn that conservatives assert that the recent increase in the growth of employment and reduction in unemployment are due to the failure to extend extended unemployment insurance. The headline labor force statistics have changed in the direction they predicted. Steve Benen noted the argument and linked to counter arguments by […]

Here are my confused thoughts about the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Harris v. Quinn decisions. Unfortunately, I am Waldmann not Mann and don’t know anything about the law. I will pretend that there is some logic behind the decisions. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby the majority found that Hobby Lobby has religious freedom — […]

I finally did a bit of empirical work related to Consumption/Wealth as a leading indicator (see older post). I am reflecting on “consumers – in aggregate – have genuine foresight; this is why consumption-wealth ratios help predict equity returns.” I think I won’t restate exactly whom I am quoting. My thoughts were that the variable […]