lifted from Calculated Risk From the International Air Transport Association: Cargo Plummets 22.6% in December (hat tip Bob_in_MA) In the month of December global international cargo traffic plummeted by 22.6% compared to December 2007. The same comparison for international passenger traffic showed a 4.6% drop. The international load factor stood at 73.8%. For the full-year […]

rdan Naked Capitalism also points to the underlying inattention to US trade policy and our financial wizards. Last night, we reported that the International Institute of Finance was calling for a global GDP contraction for 2009. The IMF today, while not going as far as the IIF, got about as downbeat as one could expect […]

reader Jimi sends a link to a NYT article in 1988 on the economist schism mentioned in 2009 NYT article.

Robert Waldmann Mark Thoma has a long post on the end of the Fresh Water Salt Water truce. He quotes at length from Olivier Blanchard’s declaration of peace in our time. In particular from Blanchard the old fresh water/salt water distinction has become largely irrelevant: While research on the topic started with new-Keynesians, recent research […]

rdan A background for the non economists concerning freshwater and saltwater economists harks back to 1976 when Robert Hall christened the central schism in macroeconomic thought as being between the freshwater and saltwater schools. The division was picked by their location (on the Great Lakes and Rivers versus the coastal schools). The division exists today […]

by reader Noni Mausa The ‘illions, by volume, area and time If a millionWas a walnut A billionWould be three ice cream pails A trillionWould be my spare bedroom====If a millionCould be covered by a man’s handkerchief A billionCould be covered by a 1500 square foot bungalow A trillionWould be 25 acres – 33 football […]

Arnold Kling doesn’t support the stimulus, but he doesn’t agree with fresh water critics either. He refers to Mankiw’s classification of macroeconomists as “scientists” and “engineers” then writes Because the data are not powerful enough to reject any hypothesis against an interesting alternative, the macroeconomic “scientists” divorced themselves from the “engineers,” who continued to use […]

by Bruce Webbreader Buffpilot in comments insists the answer is clearly yes on the grounds The Dems, have NEVER, shown fiscal responsibility when in charge of the purse strings (or at least since before LBJ). So you have zero track record to back you up on thinking that the Dems will suddenly cut back government […]

by Bruce Webb Movie Guy further requested some discussion on CBO Director Elmendorf’s testimony to Congress from yesterday. The whole text is here Elmendorf testifies before House Budget Comm I didn’t have time to thouroughly review the whole thing but these tables were interesting enough to put up for comment.

by Bruce WebbReader Movie Guy suggests that the following letter and table merit some discussion. It seems to speak for itself but the whole thing is short enough simply to post (I deleted some returns and added some commas to save space, the original PDF is here CBO Letter to Rep. Ryan). Please add any […]