Yves Smith points to more OCC serving bank interests (not a surprise) in “Independent” Foreclosure Review Error Rate Vastly Higher Than Previously Admitted and well worth reading as usual: At this point, it seems hard to add insult to injury, given the terrible track record of the OCC Independent Foreclosure Reviews. But it’s nevertheless been […]
The Next Plague: Alzheimer’s In the 1970s and 1980s, a plague called AIDS swept through this country. Like a medieval scourge it was mysterious, incurable, and ruthless as it killed those who were far too young to die. Now, baby-boomers have reason to fear a new scourge: It won’t cut them down in their youth, […]
It turns out that Paul Krugman is not the only NYT columnist/blogger who reads Angry Bear. Ross Douthat does, too! Okay, seriously: Douthat’s delicate-ballet filleting of Brooks’s take on Piketty is priceless. Now, maybe someone can fillet Douthat’s take on tax-rate increases for “Americans making (or inheriting) in the $100,000-$500,000 range,” which, he says, “is […]
To be fair, I don’t think Hannity had any idea about Bundy’s racial theories. However, it’s generally a good idea to be wary of lionizing people who go around saying: “I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing.” Anyhow, Cliven was toast, although he did make an appearance on CNN, in which he […]
Japan has had its discount rate in the zero lower bound range for many years. If the Fisher effect had any truth to it, we should have seen the real interest rate return back to its natural level of 1% or so. What do we see? (link to updated graph) The graph shows Japan’s central […]
The Fisher effect is defined by Paul Krugman & Robin Wells in their textbook… Economics, 3rd Editon 2013, page 721. “The expected real interest rate is unaffected by changes in expected future inflation. According to the Fisher effect, an increase in expected future inflation drives up the nominal interest rate, where each additional percentage point […]
Piketty wouldn’t raise taxes on income, which thriving professionals have a lot of; he would tax investment capital, which they don’t have enough of. — David Brooks, The Piketty Phenomenon, New York Times, today Alexandra Petri has a trademark-funny piece today in the Washington Post that she promises tells you “[e]verything you need to know […]
Noah Smith brought up the issue of the long run Fisher effect. Yet, he wants to see micro-foundation models. “Specifically, what I’d be interested to see is for someone to find some micro-foundations for the Neo-Fisherite result that don’t depend on fiscal policy reaction functions.” He found a paper written by Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé and Martín […]
Last week there was an 1.5 hr discussion with the following participants: Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia University), Paul Krugman (Princeton University), and Steven Durlauf (University of Wisconsin–Madison) participated in a panel moderated by LIS Senior Scholar Branko Milanovic. The Center just posted it yesterday on their youtube channel.