Angry Bear readers are familiar with Mark’s writings: Mark Thoma is a macroeconomist and time-series econometrician at the University of Oregon. His research focuses on how monetary policy affects the economy, and he has also worked on political business cycle models. Mark is currently a fellow at The Century Foundation, a columnist at The Fiscal […]

By Noni Mausa A Nation of the Non-productive? Over on Brad deLong’s blog, I tossed off a comment. Thought it was a throw-away, but is it really? ======= Now and then for fun, I dip into the Wealth of Nations. Here’s a snippet from the beginning of Chapter III: ““A man grows rich by employing […]

by Linda Beale How Apple avoids US taxes with shell games Tomorrow’s Congressional hearing on the ability of major multinationals to shift profits offshore to avoid US tax (and everywhere-else tax) may finally get the attention of the American public onto a tax issue worth thinking about. As today’s New York Times makes clear, Apple […]

Much ado is made of the Fed’s “credibility,” which is dog-whistle-speak for its ability, willingness, and decided inclination to jump all over any (expected or imagined) whiff of that horrifying threat — inflation! — especially the most terrifying bogeyman, “wage inflation.” You won’t, on the other hand, find “credibility” discussed when people speak of the […]

Allan Marks, in a comment on a Krugman post, reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in filmdom. Krugman’s complaining that he doesn’t understand the rules that his detractors are arguing by, and Marks suggests he watch this (55 seconds): Is anyone else wishing our esteemed President knew the rules for knife fights? Cross-posted […]

Or: “Dudley Makes Mock of the Monetarists.” In my post The Fed is not “Printing Money.” It’s Retiring Bonds and Issuing Reserves, I said: …when the Fed gives the banks reserves and retires bonds, it’s taking on market risk/reward, replacing it with absolutely nonvolatile, risk/reward-free assets (at least in nominal terms). It’s removing leverage and volatility from […]

After hinting at it for months, I can finally post the abstract of and a link to “Top Marginal Taxation and Economic Growth” by my student Santo Milasi The paper explores the relationship between statutory top marginal tax rates on personal income and long-run economic growth. While theoretical models of endogenous growth explicitly allow for […]

I’d like to reply to one confusion and one set of pushbacks on yesterday’s post: Currency and Reserve Balances I buried one fact: banks can reduce total Fed reserve balances by withdrawing currency — physical cash — from their Fed reserve accounts. I only gestured toward this in a parenthetical and a link. It’s a trivial […]

Carpe diem, indeed: Mr Bernanke’s own appointment in 2005 was a case in point. There were several candidates that year. According to people involved, then-President George W. Bush leaned towards Martin Feldstein, a former economic adviser to Ronald Reagan…. But Mr Feldstein was a director of the insurance company AIG, which restated five years of […]

This quote has a number of meaning perhaps.  Jay offers one in the form of a question…and more from Bill Black in an interview: The real news BARACK OBAMA, U.S. PRESIDENT: Thanks to the grit and determination of the American people, we’ve cleared away the rubble of the worst economic crisis in our lifetimes. So […]