It is well known that the Federal Reserve in its three rounds of QE (and especially the first two) aggressively bought Treasury Notes and Bonds or collectively the ‘Long Bond’ of 10 Years and longer. But there has been relatively little discussion of what that means for such things as Federal Government Net Interest etc. […]
Disappointingly, the BEA flash estimate is that US GDP grew at an annualized rate of only 2.6% from the third to the fourth quarter of 2014 after having grown at a 5 % annualized rate from the second to the third. This is well within the ordinary range of changes of growth rates without a […]
Noah Smith has replied to my recent post criticizing his use of median household income to measure middle class living standards. He raises some interesting questions, but some of them still leave me scratching my head. Smith writes: I don’t understand the idea that “households have had to” compensate for lower weekly wages (also the […]
CBO Budget and Economic Outlook: 2015 to 2025 Document link for Robert’s post. Lots of numbers here, including a new Jan 2015 Baseline for Social Security Just started poking at the numbers but it seems that CBO has revised projected revenue for SocSec down going forward. Not by a lot but perhaps enough to make […]
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 […]
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 […]
Guest post by Nathan Salminen (is a lawyer and an amateur economic and political researcher. Nathan has been politically active for many years, including working for the Senate Committee on the Judiciary as a law clerk. Nathan currently practices law in New York and runs Politics that work.) Dan here…this is the second part to […]
Holiday present for you via Congress and the Cromnibus. Tucked into the massive spending bill Congress passed this weekend was legislation that reversed 40 years of federal law protecting retirees’ pensions. The change will allow benefit cuts for up to 10 million workers, many of them part of a shrinking middle-class workforce in businesses such […]