by Rebecca Wilder Euro Area Inflation: A Very Slow Burn Euro area consumer prices increased at a 2.4% annual pace in May, down 0.2 ppt from the 2.6% pace in April. Core inflation fell to 1.8% in May from 1.9% in April. Headline and core inflation peaked in the fourth quarter of 2011, and disinflation […]

In an email exchange between Dan and me on Tuesday, I wrote: Btw, the Supreme Court has been amazingly slow this term in issuing opinions in high-profile cases.  Most of the opinions they’ve issued recently are on pretty esoteric issues; they’re important, but pretty inside-baseball.  A good example is an opinion they issued yesterday.  Here’s […]

by Kenneth Thomas Guest post: Why the World Should Care About America’s Middle Class Tim Worstall, in his Forbes blog, attacks my series (here and here) on whether globalization is good for America’s middle class. Not on the basis that he disagrees with my conclusion (though he does), but because, he argues, there are much […]

by Kenneth Thomas Guest Post:   Is globalization good for America’s middle class? Part 2 In Part 1, I examined what economic theory has to say about the winners and losers from trade. The main conclusion is based on the Stolper-Samuelson Theorem: Because the United States is labor scarce in a global perspective, an expansion of […]

The Fed’s credibility is obviously important. If people believe that they can and will do what they say they’re going to do — and that it will have the desired effect — they can affect the the real economy (at least short-term) by just making promises — Open Mouth Operations. (Though they must actually do […]

by Rebecca Wilder Euro Area ‘Hard Data’ Catching Up with the ‘Soft Data’ – Industrial Production Euro area industrial production (ex construction) declined 0.8% in the month of April. Across the major sectors, the largest decline occurred in capital goods; however, the trend in consumer and intermediate goods is worse than that of capital goods. […]

Or: Yes, The Rich Really Are Different You’ve all probably seen the depressing reports from the newly issued 2010 edition of the Fed’s triennial Survey of Consumer Finance, in particular the 39% drop in median household net worth, ’07-’10. Here’s a picture (click for larger): The well-off have done fine. In the greatest economic downturn […]

I regularly see right wingers and republicans claiming that we should allow unlimited oil and gas drilling because it would create so many jobs. If you look at the recent data on growth in employment in oil & gas drilling it appears they may have a good argument.  Over the past year employment in oil […]

Tim Johnson, Democrat of South Dakota, committee leader: “How can a bank take on ‘far too much risk’ if the point of the trades was to reduce risk in the first place? Or was the goal really to make money?” Mr. Johnson said in prepared remarks. “As the saying goes, you can’t have your cake […]