The terrorists have now hit London, which leaves me speechless. I’m suspecting that John Gibson would like to retract what he said yesterday: Paris was exactly the right place to pick and the Olympic committee screwed up. Why? Simple. It would have been a three-week period where we wouldn’t have had to worry about terrorism. […]

Today’s news of increased layoffs raises the question of why the Federal Reserve is allowing short-term interest rates to rise. David Altig and Mark Thoma offer the explanation that perhaps the Federal Reserve believes we are near full employment so that if the Federal Reserve allows aggregate demand growth to outstrip the increase in potential […]

This weekend began with an apparent bombshell from Lawrence O’Donnell during the taping of the McLaughlin Group: Time magazine’s emails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper’s source. I have known this for months but didn’t want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury. While […]

After a nice long weekend, a little reading … NY Times on Australia: Hole in the Housing Bubble The Australian housing boom has come to a halt, in a move that many see as the first signs of the end to a housing bubble, not just in Australia, but also in the U.S. Baltimore Sun: […]

Do I and Mark Thoma need to purchase Rational Exuberance to understand what Michael Mandel is trying to say? Perhaps this will give us some clue. Mandel’s first post drew my fire as he seemed to be suggesting economists like Paul Krugman and Mark Thoma did not realize the importance of intellectual capital – defined […]

Inspired by PGL’s reference to the debate between Nouriel Roubini and Art Laffer, I visited Laffer’s house to talk to him. But before I had a chance to ask him why he thinks the Laffer curve (the idea that cutting taxes will actually lead to higher tax revenues) actually has any empirical relevance to the […]

Nouriel Roubini did yeoman’s work in his Déjà Vu Voodoo Economics (June 20), which was his summary of a debate with Art Laffer. Roubini noted that CNBC had him debate Laffer in light of this news, which included April tax revenues coming in $1 billion more than estimated. And yet, Victor Canto writes: It also […]

Mark Mandel weighs in on a Mark Thoma critique of a column written by Chris Farrell – but seems to have missed the point of the Farrell-Thoma debate. Farrell and Thoma were discussing the role of monetary policy and the business cycle. As Mandel accuses Thoma of missing the point, he changes the discussion to […]

One more thought about today’s FOMC statement: at a certain point, one starts to wonder why the FOMC can’t just use plain English when trying to convey its intentions. Currently, economists and financial market participants spend considerable time and energy trying to interpret exactly what the FOMC is signaling with its statements. So why can’t […]

The FOMC just released its statement announcing that it has decided to increase the Federal Funds rate yet again by 0.25%, to 3.25%. This was expected. The only point of uncertainty was exactly what signal the Fed would send the market about future rate hikes. Would they suggest that this period of interest rate increases […]