In comments here, Mark Sadowski says a lot of thoughtful things, including this: Beckworth is claiming that AD growth has been steady despite fiscal contraction which it has. In fact the standard deviation of the quarterly growth rate in nominal GDP (NGDP) since 2010Q1 is by far the lowest for any 13 quarter period on […]

Dean Baker makes what seems to be a stunningly obvious point, one that I haven’t seen discussed anywhere. Condensed and with emphasis added for your consideration: …the value of our [government] debt will plummet if interest rates rise… we could buy back long-term debt issued today at interest rates of less than 2.0 percent for discounts of […]

Recently, I was pleased to note a disagreement between Paul Krugman and Dean Baker.  Finally, I hoped, a chance to prove I am not a knee jerk acolyte of Krugman.  Sadly I found I agreed with Krugman and not Baker (ouch).  But I didn’t give up hope, until yesterday. Surely, I can disagree with Krugman […]

João Marcus Marinho Nunes is personally offended by my previous Angry Bear post.   Personally I was ‘offended’ by being ‘accused’ of “using short-time series data”, ignoring “what is a valid context” and “cherry picking”. Which was odd, since I didn’t accuse him of anything.  In fact, he wasn’t even on my radar screen.  He […]

Via Naked Capitalism comes this question about comparing economic data for a successful area in the aggregate with contrasting signs of things being not so good for some. Puzzling Economic Sightings Now and again I ask readers for input on what they are seeing locally, a sort of regional check on the statistics and media […]

by Linda beale The ‘ignorance is bliss’/’ride’em cowboy’ mentality of today’s GOP Today’s GOP is dominated by the Tea Party types that are a cross between an ostrich with its head stuck in the sand– the “ignorance is bliss” philosophy– and a 1860s cowboy as depicted in the 1960s western-mania TV shows– the “hell bent […]

Via the Washington Post comes this idea of economic incentive: But research by noted economists Karl Case, John Quigley and Robert Shiller found the households were more powerful affected by declines in wealth than increases. An unexpected 1 percent drop in housing prices caused a permanent 0.1 percent decrease in spending, that study found. But […]

This is a companion piece to Steve’s AB post from earlier today, where he points out the specious reasoning of  “the likes of Scott Sumner, David Beckworth, Lars Christensen, et al., claiming that fiscal austerity has obviously had no effect on GDP growth.” I wrote Sumner off a few years ago due to a highly […]

You’re seeing a lot of crowing these days from the likes of Scott Sumner, David Beckworth, Lars Christensen, et al., claiming that fiscal austerity has obviously had no effect on GDP growth. “Look!” they say: “Even with the sequester and all the other government spending cuts, growth in 2013 has been the same as 2012! […]

The Cato Institute, originally the Charles Koch Foundation, is one of the most influential libertarian think tanks in the country. With both Charles and David Koch on its board of directors, Cato has produced numerous studies on the evils of corporate subsidies (which it calls “corporate welfare“), dating back at least to the 1990s. Supposedly, […]