A nominal GDP target makes sense. If inflation runs below target for a while, it makes sense for inflation to run over target in the future in order to achieve the desired long run growth to inflation. So how might a policy rule to determine the Fed rate be modified for a NGDP target? A […]
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 […]
Dan here…When in Fort Lauderdale, FL to visit a son and his girlfriend this Christmas, I ran into the phenomenon of ‘lots of stuff’ as they furnished their new apartment. Both real estate turnover and ‘used furniture’ were thriving industries, I assume partly from the turnover of ‘snowbirds’ and younger folk offering services to this […]
Just when I thought I had finally gotten out they pull me back in. Matt Yglesias , Tyler Cowen and Kevin Drum have noticed that US GDP growth picked up exactly when US austerity stopped (as I noted here). The pattern is so strong that it looks similar even though Yglesias, Drum and I graph […]
Sorry to bother angrybears, but I must confess I can’t stop looking at the same 20 data points. A pointless post not up to angrybear standards post is here (it is a follow up of the equally pointless post here)
by Barkley Rosser at Econospeak Has The Oil Price Drop Come To An End? Very likely. Reports from November report that the Saudi government has been preparing its budget for the price of oil to be between $45 and $50 per barrel. The price rose during the last two days and fell slightly today, with […]
Gail Tverberg offers her view on possible ramifications of the severe drop in prices for oil and debt financed growth: There are really two different problems that a person can be concerned about: Peak oil: the possibility that oil prices will rise, and because of this production will fall in a rounded curve. Substitutes that […]
PGL at Econospeak points us to declining expenditures for education: …Bill McBride has been leading the discussion on state fiscal austerity including this from a few months ago: the public sector has declined significantly since Mr. Obama took office (down 657,000 jobs). These job losses have mostly been at the state and local level, but more recently at […]
Yves Smith points us to additional 114th Congress changes: How the Republican Campaign to Gut Dodd Frank is a Huge Gimmie to Banks and Private Equity Funds The Republicans have been quick and shameless in using their control of both houses to try to crank up the financial services pork machine into overtime operation. The […]
In the latest episode of Barack Unbound, the Obama administration has announced an important executive initiative. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) will cut the fee it charges to insure mortgages from 1.35% of the value of the mortgage to 0.85%. It will also try to encourage lenders to relax lending standards. I suspect that this […]