Blog Profile / TheMoneyIllusion
| URL : | http://www.themoneyillusion.com/ | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Business & Finance / Economics | |
| Posts on Regator: | 1196 | |
| Posts / Week: | 10.8 | |
| Archived Since: | April 1, 2011 | |
Blog Post Archive
Money isn’t “easy”– A rant
I am traveling today, so only have time to complain about some themes I keep coming across when reading the press and speaking to people out in the real world. No links. 1. There is no reason at all for the ECB to look around for transmission mechanisms to boost the eurozone economy. Europe is [...]
A Japanese recovery?
Japan’s new GDP numbers look a bit puzzling: Japan’s economy expanded the most in a year last quarter as consumer spending and export gains outweighed the weakest business investment since the wake of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Gross domestic product rose an annualized 3.5 percent, a Cabinet Office release showed in Tokyo. Private [...]
A NGDP targeting counterfactual
A commenter asked me to do a post on what would have happened if NGDP targeting had been put into effect in mid-2008. The immediate effect would have been a boom in asset prices, and most likely Lehman would not have failed. The big financial crisis of October 2008 would not have happened. In other [...]
Clive Crook on DeLong and Krugman
Here’s Clive Crook: The substance of DeLong’s complaint about my column and post appears to be that they lack supporting documentation. I asserted (thinking it self-evident) that many Republicans are thoughtful and public-spirited. DeLong is incredulous and finds it revealing that I failed to give examples. Show More Summary
6 months in Japan
Last November 15th I did a post after day one one the Great Japanese Bull Market. Here are a few excerpts: Each day I check out the major stock markets. This morning I saw that Hong Kong and Singapore were down over 1%. Britain, Germany and France were also down. But the Japanese market, which [...]
2001: A blogging odyssey
That’s right, this is my 2001st post. Many of the early posts were quite long, and hence there are over 3000 pages of single-spaced material in my Microsoft Word file. That’s got to be longer than In Search of Lost Time! A former student of mine named Garrett MacDonald read my entire blog over the [...]
How the Keynesians miss the bigger picture
Another day, another data point suggesting a zero fiscal multiplier: The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits dropped to its lowest level in nearly 5-1/2 years last week, signaling labor market resilience in the face of fiscal austerity. On the other hand, Matt Yglesias points out that most pragmatic economists are at [...]
Bloomberg in Boston
Bloomberg has a new radio station in Boston (1200AM) Here’s an interview I did this morning (May 8) with Tom Keene and Michael McKee. And from last week an interview with my colleague Aaron Jackson, and also Marvin Goodfriend of Carnegie Mellon.
Megan Greene on negative IOR
Tyler Cowen linked to a new Megan Greene piece in the FT: In its efforts to get banks lending again, the ECB is looking at excess reserves — some 120 billion euros ($157 billion) the banks have been holding on deposit at the central bank for safekeeping. If the ECB were to introduce a negative [...]
Nunes on Krugman
Marcus Nunes discusses Clive Crook’s analysis of Paul Krugman, and then adds the following: All this comes out clearly in Krugman´s May 6 column for the NYT, but I want to be specific in my comment, so I´ll concentrate on one of his favorite arguments, and show it´s misleadingly wrong. Krugman writes: F.D.R. cut back sharply [...]
Bartlett on Keynes
Bruce Bartlett has a characteristically thoughtful piece on Keynes: Brad DeLong, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, has posted a long list of conservative attacks on Keynes that have used his homosexuality as a reason to reject his economic theories. But even economists who had no interest in this aspect of Keynes’s life, like the [...]
Accounting for the German miracle
Finally I’ve been getting a flood of German data. I’ll rely on data from Mark Sadowski, but would also like to thank Johannes Fritz, libertaer, and Martin. Here’s Mark: The data is as follows: RGDP (annual rate) 2006Q1 – 2,263,994.4 million euro 2008Q1 – 2,429,934.8 million euro 2012Q4 – 2,463,022.8 million euro The average rate [...]
A follow-up on Germany
Most people seem to have misinterpreted my previous post, probably because I “buried the lede” at the end. Just to be clear, I have no problem explaining why German unemployment fell between 2006 and 2012. Although NGDP growth was fairly slow, Germany did lots of labor market reforms, which I’ve discussed in previous posts, and [...]
The German jobs miracle (and German data bleg)
This is a fairly important post, but it will take me a while to get to the punch line. I’ve been trying to collect German data, but have not had a lot of success. As far as I can tell, between the 1st quarter of 2006 and the 4th quarter of 2012, the German unemployment [...]
Taylor and Cochrane on monetary policy targets
John Taylor recently criticized central bank policies in the major economies, and re-iterated his support for a clear rule for the policy instrument. John Cochrane responded: John Taylor has a lovely little blog post, encapsulating so much in a few sentences. An excerpt with comments (emphasis mine) …there is a crucial issue which explains much of the [...]
As usual, I have a scowl on my face
Here’s Karl Smith: Volker’s clout on the FOMC grew the entire time and when he became Fed Chairman in 1979, he dropped the hammer.. . . The Fed drove the funds rate up from 5% in 1976 to 19% in 1981. I know, I know, Scott Sumner is scowling. Here is the growth rate [...]
Mark Sadowski on policy counterfacturals
Here’s Mark Sadowski from the comment section: Tax change multipliers used used by private forecasting firms and by government models such as the Federal Reserve’s FRB/US suggest that about half of the ultimate level economic effect of the payroll and income tax increase should be felt by the second quarter. Similarly government purchase multipliers suggest [...]
Ryan Avent and Matt Yglesias on monetary offset
Here’s Ryan Avent: There is little reason to expect the economy to accelerate in the near term. Barack Obama desperately wants to scrap the sequester, but unless congressmen heard a groundswell of protest in their districts during this week’s recess, they are unlikely to return to Washington motivated to fix it. The Federal Reserve had [...]
Market monetarism isn’t working (yet), but the Keynesian model is failing
Here’s Josh Barro: After today’s good jobs report, my colleague Ramesh Ponnuru needles Paul Krugman: “So, I assume Krugman will now concede that market monetarism is working.” Not quite, because the Fed is not yet targeting NGDP. But the next part of Barro’s post explains what Ponnuru was referring to: Market monetarism, as advanced by Ponnuru and the economist [...]
Universal health care won’t improve health, but I support it
Suppose there had been a futures market in the life expectancy differential between the US and Europe in the year 2030. Does anyone seriously believe that the passage of Obamacare would have reduced the expected differential? Liberals sometimes point to the higher life expectancy in Europe in support of health care reform, but I doubt [...]