Core inflation is low in China… 1.4%. (link) Inflation is always pretty low in China due to weak labor share and weak domestic demand. But there is a concern that inflation will continue to fall as over-productive capacity reveals itself more and more. China is able to produce much more than there is demand for. […]
Guest Post by Mark Jamison, retired Postmaster Webster, N.C. It’s been said that “life imitates art” but the idea of government spying on its citizens didn’t originate with George Orwell and his version of “Big Brother”. The United States has a long history of spying on its citizens. The revelations of the U.S. Senate Select […]
In response to the the Neo-Fisherite view that persistently low interest rates leads to low inflation, Nick Rowe writes that we have to see what happens to the money base in order to determine inflation. He implies that the Fisher Effect has to have an explanation based on the growth rate of the money supply. […]
Amateur Socialist at Angry Bear asked me about how much was being spent per vote in 2014, and did the due diligence of finding me a spreadsheet showing how many ballots were cast per state. Ask and ye shall receive. Based on that data, here’s a rough-and-ready calc of how much was spent on each […]
Follow-up post here to John Cochrane’s clarification of the Fisher Effect. In his post, Mr. Cochrane pointed out the different ways (with stability or instability) that inflation could change to changes in nominal rates. His post includes a graph that since the Fed rate hit the ZLB, inflation has been stabilizing… something which supports the […]
John Cochrane responded to recent blogs about the Fisher Effect instigated by Noah Smith. The best thing that John Cochrane showed in his post is that there are short-run effects and long-run effects of policy rate changes upon inflation. The Fisher Effect represents the long-run effects. There are nice comments under his post. “…this is […]
If you’re like me, you’re often frustrated trying to find total (like, total) campaign spending by Democrats vs. Republicans. Outfits like the Sunlight Foundation do yeoman’s duty tallying spending, but you tend to get articles like this that (for fairly good reasons) don’t give you totals, rather breaking it down into campaign/party-committee spending vs SuperPAcs vs 501-whatever “social welfare organizations.” What’s […]
… here. It’s nonsense. Obvious, absolute nonsense. Why are so many pundits buying into this line? Maybe because they’ve heard it over and over and over, from other pundits? Sorta like other things they’ve heard over and over and over, that maybe they should stop buying? Yeah, probably.
This was published yesterday morning, but I just saw it now. I agree with almost everything it says. The one exception concerns Bruce Braley, who despite the silly controversies about chickens and Iowa Farmer Grassley, is someone I hope remains involved in Dem politics. The spot-on-ist part of this really spot-on analysis? The last two paragraphs: […]