How fast is slack consumed? How can we measure the speed at which slack is consumed? We can use capacity utilization and unemployment to set up a simple measure for consuming slack by dividing capacity utilization by the unemployment rate in terms of percentage change year-over-year. (Thanks to Alan Thomson at Terra Firma Financial who […]

In a speech by Janet Yellen on April 11, 2012, she talked about her preferred version of the Taylor rule to determine the Federal Funds rate. The Taylor (1993) rule calls for the federal funds rate to begin rising in early 2013, whereas the Taylor (1999) rule has its liftoff in early 2015, a lot […]

by David Zetland on Aguanomics Time for a new boat OM writes from California: Have you thought or written about public purchase of water flows needed for the environment? We have a new water bond that includes a lot of funds for this sort of thing. It strikes me that it fits with the model […]

Lifted from an op ed e-mail from Stormy: A piece in the Guardian is interesting, dealing with poverty (real poverty) and inequality.  I think that Angry Bear should really address what can be done about rising inequality.   Here are the last two paragraphs: The prospect is one of a society such as the one we […]

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is the first book to make a data-driven examination of economic inequality. Based on hundreds of years worth of data, it attempts to determine the long-term trends in inequality and the social and political consequences that follow from them. In this final post, I want to highlight the most […]

I posted a graph where I overlaid the Effective Demand rule over the Taylor rule variations done by Tim Duy. You can see differences between the rules since the crisis. Why the difference? And does the difference matter? Basic Taylor rule Target Fed rate = natural real rate + inflation + 0.5*(inflation – inflation target) […]

This will be short and sweet, consider it a Health Care Open Thread. ‘Repeal and Replace’ is a pipe dream. Because all the good parts of ACA including guaranteed issue, coverage of pre-existing conditions and inclusions of young people on their parents’ policy actually cost money. At least up front. Which has to come from […]

On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 1:47 PM, Dan <[email protected]> emailed: Rortybomb, New Piece on Where the ACA Should Go Next Rorty touts the 2009 House Bill which calls for a Public Option and described here To improve ‘Obamacare,’ reconsider the original House bill Maggie Mahar replies: Originally I favored a public option, but in […]

The San Francisco Fed has a paper, Assessing Expectations of Monetary Policy, where they make a case that the market expects monetary policy to be more accommodative than the Fed is projecting. How could that be when the Fed has been so aggressively accommodative until now? Shouldn’t they tighten already? In my view, the market […]