I posted a question to our readers… How should monetary policy change if reducing inequality was seen as the most important priority? An assessment of the comments… The real issue of monetary policy’s effect on inequality its purpose to generate a “wealth effect” which will increase spending. A few things were said about the wealth […]

by Joseph Joyce (is a Professor of Economics at Wellesley College and the Faculty Director of the Madeleine Korbel Albright Institute for Global Affairs and maintains his blog at Capital Ebbs and Flows) China’s Place in the Global Economy Last week’s announcement that China’s GDP grew at an annualized rate of 7.4% in the first […]

I have been playing with the Livingston survey economic forecasts and, in particular, with the median forecast of CPI inflation over the following 6 and 12 months. The survey was conducted each June and December since June 1946. For some reason, the data are available in two files one with forecasts made December 2003 and […]

Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise While Rubin sits like Buddha in a ten-foot cell An innocent man in a living hell That’s the story of the Hurricane But it won’t be over till they clear his name And give him […]

Hostages to fortune Recently, I wrote a note on expected inflation in the USA. One of the two sources of data I used was the Livingston survey of expert forecasters. I used the median forecasts of the CPI 6 and 12 months ahead from the start of the survey in 1946 through 2003, when the […]

Too funny to miss, folks.

I am watchng the video of Paul Krugman on Bill Moyers. Mr. Krugman is seeing things about inequality that he hadn’t seen before Piketty’s book. So he is now seeing that inequality is a huge problem now and into the future. Inequality is the one major problem in the economy. Question… How should monetary policy […]

I haven’t beaten the drum lately for Lane Kenworthy — perhaps the best researcher out there on the economic effects of income and wealth distribution. His years of careful, diligent (and voluminous) statistical and analytic work, tapping the best data sets available, and his cogent, coherent explanations of his findings, should get a lot more attention […]

The latest numbers on 2014 taxes as share of income are out, and they’re saying pretty the same thing as last year: Above about $80K a year in income, the American tax system is not really progressive. Like, at all: The people making $100K a year pay about the same share of income at people making $10 […]

Paul Krugman has a post talking about how tighter monetary policy caused Sweden to go into deflation. Here is the chart showing their deflation. OK… we can see the deflation there far to the right. Paul Krugman talked about Sweden raising the interest rate to battle bubbles. Let’s look at the interest rate in Sweden. […]