Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Housing equity withdrawal drove the bubble, not so much the building

Tim Duy also points to Bill McBride and Josh Lerner adding to the discussion of the narrative of housing in our economy and how that should affect policy.  I would add of course the variety of responses by the mortgage industries (see Naked Capitalism) since that started in earnest round 1998 (MERS).  I think this […]

The Scariest Graphic I Made All Week, or, Still More on Excess Reserves and "Money"

One of the nice things about the Kauffman Foundation’s Blogger Conference is the time to let the mind wander and look at data after having your brain scoured. One of the worst things is realizing too late that you’ve got a Really Ugly Graphic, and most of the people who could help with it are […]

Must-Read of the Day, non-NBER edition

Tim Duy body-slams St. Louis FRB President James Bullard: Estimates of potential GDP are not simple extrapolations of actual GDP from the peak of the last business cycles. They are estimates of the maximum sustainable output given fully employed resources. The backbone of the CBO’s estimates is a Solow Growth model. So I don’t think […]

Duncan Black, Ph.D. who Specializes in the Economies of Cities, Explains It All to You

Bruce has made this point repeatedly. Dr. Black puts it in more direct language: [I]nevitably the Social Security Trustees will, perfectly justifiably, tweak a few assumptions about future economic activity so that there will be a DOOM scenario, an EVERYTHING’S AWESOME scenario, and a “uh oh maybe in about 40 years we will have a […]