(Dan here. Spencer sends this e-mailed post): by Spencer England Real trade balance and 1st Q real GDP growth Figure 1 With the federal deficit jumping from 3.5% to 5% of GDP the US will be expanding its current account deficit by a like amount. You can see it in the January trade balance where […]
Trump on Our Trade Surplus/Deficit With Canada Menzie Chinn listens to the latest from Donald Trump so we don’t have to: And by the way, Canada? They negotiate tougher than Mexico. Trudeau came to see me, he’s a good man, he said we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please. Nice guy, good looking […]
Kudlow Predicts An Investment Boom Kudlow channels his inner Gerald Friedman: Larry Kudlow, picked to be President Trump’s new economic adviser, has privately told the White House that the nation’s economy is on the verge of 4 percent to 5 percent growth, or more than double the last decade. In a recent gathering with Trump, he […]
The Grand Illusion 2.0 Introductory note: this is a very long epistle. But I think my point needs to be made fully and at length. Before you go further, in fairness here is the TL:DR version: Advocates of free trade and globalization were taken aback a week ago by the assumption by China’s President Xi Jinping of […]
First I stress the great effort I put into avoiding all Lamb puns in the title. Second, I think the discussion of his recent extremely narrow voctory makes the discussion of the campaign seem almost sane. Before their humiliating loss, Republican operatives insisted that voters were coming around to support their tax cut bill. In […]
by Steve Roth (via Asymptosis) Wealth and the National Accounts: Response to Matthew Klein I’m both abashed and delighted that the truly stand-out econ writer Matthew Klein has offered wonderfully fulsome praise of one of my pieces, Why Economists Don’t Know How to Think about Wealth, and some very interesting discussion as well. Some responses here. Please excuse […]
Kudlow Menzie Chinn notes: Mr. Kudlow is apparently on the short list for new National Economic Committee chair. Maybe a good time to review some of his macro predictions. Yours truly goes back memory lane: But let’s turn back the clock to the first term of the Bush43 Administration when Kudlow writing for the National Review was […]
Labor force participation, unemployment, and wages: an update About a year ago I wrote a series of posts on the relationship between the unemployment rate, labor force participation, and wage growth. Especially in view of last Friday’s jobs report, which showed blockbuster hiring, but a continuation of tepid wage growth over 8 years into the […]
(Dan here…better late posted here than not…. ) by New Deal democrat February jobs report: a blowout! Except (sigh) for wages HEADLINES: +313,000 jobs added U3 unemployment rate unchanged at 4.1% U6 underemployment rate unchanged at 8.2% Here are the headlines on wages and the chronic heightened underemployment: Wages and participation rates Not in Labor […]
I met Lynn while working with Alan Collinge of the Student Loan Justice Organization. She too has been working with Alan to call attention to the plight of students who took loans out to pay for college and the mishandling by servicers of them. The first story is of an older man who took out […]