Before I return to the RBC debate, let’s all pray that FEMA picks the pace. Our prayers all with the Gulf Coast residents and we know our nation can do better. Back on August 21, I should have led with: I should mention one problem with my fourth and favorite real business cycle suggestion, which […]

In contrast to what many people would have otherwise expected, Katrina’s aftermath is getting worse by the day, not better. In New Orleans: Huge crowds, hoping to finally escape the stifling confines of the stadium, jammed the main concourse outside the dome, spilling out over the ramp to the Hyatt hotel next door — a […]

As Calculated Risk notes this morning, the quarterly estimate of housing price appreciation by the OFHEO was just released for the April-June period of 2005. As usual, my preferred way of looking at this data is at the level of local (i.e. metropolitan area) markets. The following two charts present a sampling of house prices […]

Personal consumption spending in July was high. Very high. In fact, people spent considerably more than they earned, so the personal savings rate in July was negative: -0.6% of disposable income, to be precise. That means that, for only the second time in the past several decades (the first was in October 2001), households as […]

Passed on without comment, from today’s New York Times editorial: George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later […]

The WSJ really does have great news coverage, but man is their editorial team dragging the whole paper’s reputation into the ground. Via Brad DeLong, Stephen Moore (former Club for Growth president and now “a member of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board”) actually wrote this: The explosion of benefits paid to workers is in […]

Several people have asked me in recent days whether I think Katrina will have any measurable economic impacts on the national US economy. In general, I think it’s hard for localized events such as a hurricane (or even a large terrorist attack) to have effects on the US economy as a whole, simply because the […]

Hi all – sorry for the extended hiatus, but I’m back now. Alas, the end of August brings with it the end of my summer travels, and the end of my otherwise slothful and dissolute summer schedule. (Well, at least I tried to keep August as slothful as one can with a two-year old and […]

Increases in the number living below the poverty line as real median income is flat. The Census report for 2004 can be found here.

Robert Hall discusses Separating the Business Cycle from Other Economic Fluctuations at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s annual Jackson Hole conference. David Altig claims Hall explained it all. But what does Hall say about the most recent weakening of the labor market? For example, all practical accounts of the recession of 2001 emphasize […]