May 08, 2008
Growing credit card debt dims economic picture
The puny "economic growth" reported for the first quarter was fictitious: based on inventory build-up and growth in imputed rents. But even the current inadequate level of consume spending is driving consumers further into debt on their credit cards, and late payments are growing. Look out below!
February 20, 2008
Inflation and the Right
Here's some disquieting news: The Consumer Price Index rose 0.4 percent in January, a bigger gain than economists had predicted. Over the last 12 months, the index has surged by 4.3 percent, one of the highest year-over-year rates in decades, the Labor Department said. The rise was led by increases in the costs of food, gasoline, shelter, and transportation. The...
February 01, 2008
White House control and economic growth: the historical pattern
Every period of Democratic rule shows faster GDP growth than any period of Republican rule. Remarkable, no?
December 25, 2007
Sovereign wealth
Remember when Alan Greenspan was warning that federal budget surpluses would lead the federal government to invest in the stock market, thus giving American politicians too much influence over American corporations? Don't worry: by selling stakes to "sovereign wealth" funds, American companies are giving that same influence to foreign dictators
September 14, 2007
August 24, 2007
Revenge?
China sends the U.S. toxic toys and foodstuffs; we send back toxic securitized loans and derivatives. Asymmetric information seems to be creating a gigantic "lemons problem."
August 03, 2007
Credit crunch
If my personal experience is any guide, banks are starting to do something they've never done before: systematically cut back on credit-card lines of credit, even for borrowers with flawless credit histories.
July 13, 2007
Laffer curve follies
Brad DeLong points us, with entirely appropriate added snark, at Mark Thoma's destructo job on the WSJ's lead editorial today and the truly historically nonsensical graphish thingy in it. It might be a good time to recall what the Laffer Curve is about, and its use to argue for tax cuts long ago and in another universe. The curve relates...
October 27, 2006
Slowdown
Housing woes dragged the annualized GDP growth rate down to 1.6% for the third quarter, which isn't fast enough to maintain a stable rate of unemployment. The White House says, "Don't worry. Be happy."
May 28, 2005
December 08, 2004
A time for stubbornness
What's the Democratic position on wrecking Social Security? We're against it.
The General Fund crisis
We don't have a Social Security crisis. We have a General Fund crisis. Let's not fix the wrong problem.
November 22, 2004
Now he tells us
Good advice from Alan Greenspan. But his previous bad advice made following his current advice virtually impossible.
October 06, 2004
September 08, 2004
Inflation is good!
Hadn't you heard?
The "improving" budget numbers reflect higher inflation, not lower spending or more economic activity.
The CBO projections don't make Brad DeLong happy
Halving the deficit in five years is a low bar, but the Administration doesn't intend to clear it.
July 02, 2004
February 16, 2004
"What's the difference?" Dep't
Brad DeLong has a vignette of economic policy-makinmg within the Bush Administration that's enough to make your blood run cold. Brad reports this as Hubbard fooling Bush and the others, which strikes me as insufficiently subtle. What's really happening is that Bush and the others are asking to be fooled, and Hubbard is complying. That's not less disgraceful behavior by...
February 14, 2004
Brad DeLong plays Leo Strauss...
... with a superb "close reading" of a Marty Feldstein op-ed, showing that what Machiavelli would have called its verita effetuale is the opposite of its surface meaning....
February 12, 2004
Just wondering
I wonder why Gregory Mankiw of the Council of Economic Advisers, having told such an outrageous whopper about the likely future of employment, insisted on telling/was allowed to tell the truth about outsourcing....
February 02, 2004
An advance alibi
The United States as a whole consumes considerably more than it produces. The difference is the current account deficit, now at record levels. It's linked to the federal budget deficit because net national saving (or dissaving) is household saving plus corporate retained earnings minus the deficit (or, during the final years of the Clinton Administration, plus the surplus). If net...
January 08, 2004
A calm, analytical shriek of terror
Are you tired of Paul Krugman's shrill, partisan whining about how the Bush Administration's fiscal policies threaten to drive the economy into a ditch? Well, try reading the calm, sensible, analytical thoughts of Peter Orszag, Robert Rubin, and Allen Sinai instead. In sharp contrast with Krugman, they think that the Bush Administration's fiscal policies threaten to drive the economy into...
January 07, 2004
Drezner/de Long/Krugman update
DeLong updates; so does Drezner. [My original post on the controversy, with links, is here.] DeLong admits that his description of Drezner was ... over-enthusiastic ... and that Krugman's piece was either inarfully or too-artfully written in not making clear that "worst in 20 years" characterizes some but not all of the data. Drezner concedes that he should have...
January 06, 2004
Experts and amateurs
The nice thing about blogging is that people will read your thoughts even about stuff you don't really understand. My constant readers and academic acquaintances know that, when I write here about drug policy or crime control, I write ex cathedra as an accredited expert, while my thoughts about how to pay for music or what to do about Iraq...
December 21, 2003
Deficits, public spending, and growth
Brad DeLong has some thoughts, and some numbers, on politics and macroeconomics. Read them now. DeLong's message is pretty grim: reckless fiscal irresponsibility, a la Reagan I and Bush II, may be a better political strategy than fiscal responsibility. When are we going to hear about Republican members of the Concord Coalition walking away from the candidate of the credit-card...
November 13, 2003
Consumer spending boom?
Apparently someone forgot to tell Wal-Mart, which accounts for about 7% of total nonautomotive consumer spending nationally, about the great economic news that is supposed to have transformed the political landscape. At least, that's the impression you'd get from this Reuters story. Economists and politicians giddy about prospects for U.S. economic growth got a dousing of cold water on Thursday...
October 15, 2003
The real-world consequences of fantasyland fiscal policy
When Donald Luskin's "Krugman Truth Squad" [*] and Megan McArdle's commenters [*] are finished spewing their bile at Paul Krugman, perhaps they ought to take a look at Ricardo Caballero of MIT, writing in that famous left-wing rag the Financial Times [*]. He, too, seems to think that credit-card conservatism is likely to lead to very bad consequences unless we...
January 31, 2003
You-can't-cheat-an-honest-man dept.
Max Sawicky has been getting the same "My-father-was-the-oil-minister-of-Nigeria-before-they-shot-him-and-I-need-your help-to-regain-what-he-stole" spam emails I get every day. (You may remember Teresa Nielsen Hayden's categorization of this as a variant of the "Spanish Prisoner" in a fascinating taxonomy of basic frauds.) But Max has run into an especially tricky example, one that has fooled tens of millions of people....
