by Bruce Webb There has been a scattering of stories about how China has slowed or stopped buying U.S. Treasuries. This story offers a possible explanation LA Times: China’s investments in U.S. up sharply Beijing is using its accumulation of billions of American dollars to step up its investments around the globe. In the last […]

This is a guest contribution by Marshall Auerback, Braintruster at the New Deal 2.0 at Newsneconomics By Marshall Auerback My colleague, Rebecca Wilder, recently concluded a “Tale of Two Recoveries: Malaysia vs Germany“ which brought back memories of my own time in the Far East and some of the advisory work I did for the […]

by Rebecca Wilder The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is making tough decisions right now. Its mandate, “to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates”, is a seriously tall order given current economic conditions. The unemployment rate sits at 9.7%, while prices have bounced back to 2.6% Y/Y […]

Robert Waldmann So it turns out that extreme liberals have higher measured IQs than extreme conservatives and atheists have slightly higher IQs than biblical literalists. What does this tell us ? Matthew Yglesias sent me to this and I learned that people will not accept the fact that not all stochastic variables are normally distributed. […]

Correlation is not causation, more research and testing is required, etc. I was working from the concept that home Internet service is a luxury item—or, at the very least, non-essential.*  In short, that you would tend to give up home Internet access if the choice is between that and staying current on your mortgage. Looking […]

A conference on financial reform has just begun at 8:00 AM today 3/3 with some major names in the lineup. It is hosted by the Roosevelt Institute and will be webcast in full from 8:00 AM to 11:00 AM at www.makemarketsbemarkets.org by CNN. Bloomberg will cover the 9:30-11:00 AM segment live. Participants include George Soros, […]

by Tom aka “Rusty Rustbelt” Health Care Reform is Already Happening Ohio State University Medical Center has built an affiliated physician group of more than 600 physicians. Effective by January 1, 2011, the physicians will be merged into OSUMC (not as medical school faculty) and will be full employees of OSUMC. OSUMC will do all […]

by Linda BealeSpeculation and Finance: Good for you? (part III) In a couple of prior postings (Part 1 and Part 2), I considered (1) Darrell Duffie’s op-ed in the Wall St. Journal asserting that financial institution speculation in the markets is “good” for us and (2) the question of financial institution speculation in credit default […]

by Rebecca Wilder This is expansionary monetary policy… … this is expansionary monetary policy on drugs Note: Japan’s M1 growth is labeled on the RHS, with range -1.5% to 1.5%. Any questions? I know, kind of corny; and I did grapple over which set of economies should be labeled “on drugs”, the BIICs or the […]

by Linda Beale More on speculation: Banks, Credit Default Swaps, and Greece’s Debt (Part 2) Yesterday, I commented on Darrell Duffie’s defense of speculation in the Wall Street Journal, here. I noted that the idea that speculation is a positive because it absorbs risk others don’t want and helps reveal the “true price” by providing […]