I have gone a bit quiet on the QE front. Obviously, this is because I have been surprised and my pet theory has taken a beating. The theory was that QE amounts to basically nothing much. The dramatic effects on asset prices due to Abe/Kuroda announcements in Japan were seriousy damaging. But now not all […]
William Dudley is the President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He gave a speech about the economic outlook. The speech is standard talk about economic improvement that is not good enough yet. He states that demand is a constraint on the economy. “Turning first to consumer spending, such spending has […]
A question has been nagging me. First, does the rest of the world not get that the republicans are playing a game with the US’ bank account? Does anyone really believe that the US won’t pay as in the renter just skipped out the back door? Or maybe I should say; as in the capital […]
Barry Ritholz writes in his column in the Washington Post: To many people, the 2008-09 financial crisis was a complex, fast- moving news story and an anagram-laden, horrifying collapse. Such events often give rise to false histories, myths and ideologically driven narratives. It is vitally important that we understand what really happened. Let’s put to rest some […]
by Dale Coberly SOCIAL SECURITY AND INNUMERACY MATH HELP FOR K*ASTINGS In the open thread section last night constant reader B*uce K*asting reported: “CBO changed some variables, the result was an increase in the unfunded numbers. In 2012 CBO concluded that the shortfall was 1.9% of payrolls. In 2013 they increased that to 3.4% – […]
In response to my e-mail on an Oct. 8th decision on McCutchen vs Federal Election Commission by the Supreme Court that could expand the role of money in elections, Beverly Mann writes: … the argument in McCutchen is that it makes no sense to have this artificial divide between “issue” advocacy and candidate advocacy—that is, to […]
This is pure political fantasy. I will pretend to take Republicans seriously. They claim that Obamacare is unpopular (true) and tha the people want them to defund Obamacare. It is clear that the most unpopular part of Obamacare is the mandate (the Medicare entitlement reform which is included in House budget resolutions and of which […]
The Brookings Institute has just come out with a new paper seeking to explain the decline in labor’s share of national income. The paper is titled, The Decline of the U.S. Labor Share. It was written by Michael W. L. Elsby, Bart Hobijn, and Ayşegül Şahin. Here is a video of Justin Wolfers explaining the […]