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 […]
I am wondering why the rate of US house construction remains so low. I see two candidate explanations. The first is that lending standards remain very tight — the mortgage lenders having been very badly burnt once remain twice shy. The other is that potential house buyers no longer perceive owner occupied housing to be […]
We are seeing a resurgence of effective demand from both long term yields (borrowing costs) and headline inflation falling. What if 10-year yields fall to 1.6% by 2nd quarter 2015? And what if headline inflation falls to -0.5% by 2nd Q too? (Barclays is predicting negative headline inflation through 2015, Matthew B tweet.) I graph […]
Dan here…Angry Bear Mike Kimel addressed the issue of politics and economic growth in his book Presimetrics. Paul Krugman has as well in the last several weeks. Nathan Salminem takes another look. The post will be divided into three parts at Angry Bear, but can be read in its entirety here. Guest post by Nathan Salminen (is […]
Dan here…Via the LA Times and LA Times and Common Dreams comes information on the first day of the new Congress on Social Security. Old ideas re-emerge in the variety of coverage in media. Here is an excerpt on the issue. According to: Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson, authors of the book Social Security Works! and […]
I have been pinged @Noahpinion @sjwrenlewis also pinging @interfluidity @robertwaldmann @Frances_Coppola and anyone else who wants to get involved. — Michael Harris (@MichaelH_PhD) January 7, 2015 and am so flattered to be pinged in such company that I decided I had to read the Jeff Sachs article on Krugman Austerity and the Obama recovery and […]
The business cycle is being incredibly extended with the Fed rate at the ZLB. Effective demand is increased. But in the end, the effects of a low Fed rate cannot keep the business cycle from closing in on the effective demand limit and ending. It can slow down the process, but it cannot reverse the […]
This is a pointless follow up post to this post which got some attention. As suggested by New Keynesian models, the old post considered G — government consumption plus investment. Here I am going to look at total expenditures (including transfers) and total revenues. Also I will consider only the Federal Government (due to FRED […]