“Predicting the Next Recession” with James Hamilton

I’ll be at this UW Dept of Economics event, in order to learn what awaits us all…

(Actually, it’s required attendance for my Financial System course.)

Registration information here.

 

25 thoughts on ““Predicting the Next Recession” with James Hamilton”

  1. Moses Herzog

    I always feel a warm ebullient glow emitting from my heart when I see Professor Chinn is making new friends.

    (nobody likes a smart-a__ do they?? Ok, back to annoying those in my very immediate surroundings)

  2. pgl

    Looks like a must attend but as a New Yorker I have to ask about the date? 9/11? Yea – I guess we are still a bit oversensitive even 18 years later.

    1. Moses Herzog

      All the more reason to do it on that date. It’s the best ehf–U possible.

      But on a more “rude” note—whenever New Yorkers ever acted like they gave a flying ____ about the Murrah Building bombing here (and other things) in “fly-over country” we’ll start worrying about the “sensitivities” of “tough” New Yorkers.
      https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/23/us/a-nation-challenged-the-victims-oklahomans-questioning-sept-11-aid.html

      https://media.giphy.com/media/YjaT4XKHDV86A/giphy.gif

      1. pgl

        168 people killed in 1995 was beyond tragic. 3000 people killed in 2001 was a call to war. I guess people in Oklahoma so hate New Yorkers that they lose all perspective.

  4. AS

    Professor Chinn,
    Any chance this program will be streamed on line at a later date if not on the event date?

  5. Willie

    I saw UW and got excited. Then I saw Wisconsin instead of Washington. So it goes. It would probably sail over my head for the most part. Some might sink in.

      1. Moses Herzog

        @ Willie
        Don’t forget, some restaurants “look down on” bringing priorly purchased beverage items into their establishment, ok?? SO—-you pour the hootch into the restaurant’s Dr Pepper when the waitress is busy. Or, if you’re cowardly like me. just have your GF do that and then if the waitress catches it you look her straight in the eyes with one eyebrow twisted up high and go “Can you believe this lady sitting next to me?!?!? I think it’s some issue from her being raised an orphan in the town of Charlottesville Virginia [ intentional awkward pause here for extra impact ] …….. I’m sorry”.

          1. Moses Herzog

            It is a long drive. You’d have to be hardcore football aficionado or alumni to justify it. Some parts are Mountainy there too I think (although it gets flatter as you go south, I think??). Our vision of loveliness Gita Gopinath attended school in Pullman for a short time frame. I’ve driven there, mostly I-5 but probably anywhere there’s interstate and some U.S. routes. I’ve driven “Snowqualmie” Pass (or however it’s spelled) when it was snowing and a lot has already covered the roads and trees. It’s strikingly beautiful there when the snow blankets the trees and Mountains, but not a place you wanna hang out too long driving a semi when it starts to get slick. Never lived there, but LOVE that part of the country—both the people and the land. Nearly always got me a grin when the satellite dispatch sent me “that-a-way”. Even spent a Christmas there once (not an ideal Christmas though)

  6. Moses Herzog

    That photo I posted above from reddit, Menzie is probably too young to contribute here (although Menzie is encouraged to add if he has any thoughts), But Barkley Rosser might be able to tell us if that photo could fit in a Norman Rockwell collection, as my understanding was Rockwell and Rosser were grade school chums. I may have that wrong…… I took some Flintstones vitamins Joe Biden sent to my postbox the other day, and I really like the orange ones, but I had to stop taking them as my words got jumbled up in the last 48hrs. My neighbors had the police do a welfare check at the house because I kept calling my neighbor’s dog “George Wallace”. That’s the last time I take any pills Joe Biden sends me.

  8. Moses Herzog

    Now for a segment we call, “Memories With Joe”
    https://i.redd.it/xybbzwwntfk31.jpg

    https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4810033/cheney

    Sing it Barb:
    https://youtu.be/S-P2VhTynh0?t=88

    Sorry people, I’m getting verklempt now and I have to take a few private moments for myself with this rose scented kleenex. I saved this kleenex from the first time I got emotional hearing touching stories of “Lunch Between the Bidens and the Cheneys”—soon to be rendered in a children’s book. Three “easy” payments of 19.99. That’s 3 cents under its true retail value. Offer for a limited time only.

    1. Barkley Rosser

      Well, heck, pgl, if you are going to tell that hairy old one, here is one that I just told during a toast at a conference in a foreign land I shall not identify further (or the conference).

      So an anthropologist is studying the old theory that one gets manna, or spiritual power and intelligence from eating the brains of smart and spiritually powerful people. He goes to a South Sea island where reputedly the locals believe this theory. He finds a brain store there and goes in. Lots of vats with brains in them for sale on the shelves. He starts looking: physicist brains a dollar a pound, musician brains a dollar a pound, novelist brains a dollar a pound, economist brains $100 a pound. At this he goes to the desk to ask the guy there (busy looking at his cell phone) and asks him: “Please, sir, you have all these brains for a dollar a pound, but the economist brains are $100 a pound. Why is this?”

      Answer: “Do you know how many economists you have to kill to get a pound of brains?” (BTW, one can use that one for any profession, maybe aside from anthropologists, and not only does it always get a good laugh, but it is a nice icebreaker if one is speaking to a group that one suspects might be a bit hostile to economists.)

  10. Barkley Rosser

    This is off topic and not funny. I have just learned from NY Times obit that Marty Weitzman, whom I knew and greatly admired, killed himself by hanging on Aug. 27, mostly because he did not share last fall’s Nobel Prize in economics with Nordhaus and Romer. I was among the many who thought he deserved it.

    1. Moses Herzog

      I’m going to dare talk of things which I have very little knowledge of. When these things happen, it’s easy to look at one “event” and say it is the reason for something, because something in the human psyche (mine included) wants to be able to point at some isolated thing for a reason for something. I wager, similar to what happened to our good man Mr. Krueger, most likely it was “the final straw” of many personal things which took Mr Weitzman to the place in his mind where he was. Even suicide notes I think shed very little light on these things. If a person ties up their self-worth into awards which are often at least partly superficial in nature—instead of taking pride in the work itself or other sectors of one’s life (family, proteges, good works for strangers) no one else can be blamed for that. Outside of mental illness (which in that case is of course understandable and might have played a part here), or severe severe physical pain (late stage cancer etc) it is my personal opinion that suicide, more often times then not, is a selfish act.

    2. 2slugbaits

      I wonder if it might not be due to economists living in an ultra-competitive intellectual environment. I grew up in a village outside of Chicago (Go Bears…kick Packer butt tonight!!!) and quite a few UC economists lived in my neighborhood at one time or another….George Schultz, George Stigler and Beryl Sprinkel to name a few. When I was a kid the man who lived across the street from us was a young UC economist on the way up. His son was a couple years younger than I was. His dad almost never had any normal father/son interaction. It was like his academic drive was cranked up to 11 all the time. I must have been about 9 or 10 when his dad suddenly died. The official cause of death was an accidental overdose of tranquilizers, but a few years later my mom told me that it was actually suicide. The next door neighbor got to the note before the police arrived.

  11. Moses Herzog

    Was reading Weitzman’s obituary finally, I think Sam Roberts did a pretty good job writing that. I’ve mentioned before my Dad had this morbid habit of reading obituaries. I mean like he did it every day, and not just the NYT ones, like every day the ones in the paper where he lived and his hometown paper (which he left decades ago). I always thought it was one of the most morbid and demented personal habits a person could have (though somehow not shocking to anyone who knew my Dad). Now that he’s dead I almost find myself with this weird un-understandable compulsion to read the damned things as if carrying on some tradition or as if it has some tether to his memory. The ones in the NYT can be compelling so I can rationalize those at least.

    Has anyone noticed a lot of the players from the Miami Dolphins undefeated season team have died recently?? Was never a big fan, just thought it was weird like 3 of them died in the last 6 weeks er something. One of them was a lobbyist for the tobacco industry and some of them just were not very “likable” type guys. The ’85 Bears team would have clobbered them. just saying……..

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