With revised data, when did the last recession begin?
Monthly Archives: August 2006
Are we winning the war against the budget deficit?
The Congressional Budget Office released its update on the budget outlook today. What’s the message behind the message?
A closer look at the US-China trade figures…and more on the RMB
The Renminbi (RMB) is probably undervalued, according to some criteria. Would adjusting it fix the US-China trade deficit? Or the overall US trade deficit?
Billions for production, not a cent for conservation…
Well, not quite. But I find it interesting to see how much revenue the government loses by giving tax breaks to certain groups in the energy arena.
Good and not-so-good reasons to disagree with Bernanke
Some of the reasons people have given for why the Fed should keep raising interest rates make sense to me, and some don’t.
How do oil price shocks affect the economy?
That’s the topic of the latest Wall Street Journal Econoblog, in which I was pleased to participate along with Stephen Brown, who is Director of Energy Economics and Microeconomic Policy Analysis at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
The June 2006 Trade Figures
Persisting trends, for now
Could it be that we’re already in a recession? Lessons from the last episode
There’s a lot of talk about recession these days, despite the fairly rapid average growth of GDP in the past few quarters. Krugman (via DeLong) observes a slowdown is coming that might feel a lot like a recession. DeLong considers whether Fed policy has already raised rates to such a degree a recession is inevitable. Roubini bravely cites probabilities. My colleague James Hamilton provides a contrasting opinion, based upon his academic work with Chauvet [pdf].
Econbrowser (and hopefully Bernanke) gets it right
As we predicted here last Friday the Federal Reserve announced today its decision to hold the fed funds rate constant at 5.25%.
Bad news from Alaska
The response of oil prices to the news from Alaska has been more modest than I was expecting, with the September NYMEX crude contract currently up about $2 to $77/barrel.