I participated on Friday with several other UCSD faculty members (including Nobel laureate Harry Markowitz) in a discussion about the current economic crisis. If you have RealPlayer, you can view the discussion here, though I recommend fast-forwarding to skip the first 8 introductory minutes to get to the actual discussion. If you just want my slides, I’ve posted them here.
Are your slides that were presented at the roundtable available for download?
Michael, I’ve made them available here.
I attended the panel. It was well worthwhile.
Interesting that Markowitz, the only one old enough to remember the Depression, was the only one to oppose the bailout bill.
Yikes! Looked at your slides and they show over 15 million homes with negative equity and we probably aren’t at the bottom yet.
My Fantasy Testimony
This weekend I typed up “draft testimony” on what caused the mortgage/financial crisis. Like anyone wants to hear it. Anyway, I’ll paste it in below the fold. UPDATE: If you follow the links in James Hamilton’s post, during his talk…
Here’s another fellow that took notes:
http://encinitastaxpayers.org/blog/index.php?blog=3&title=ucsd_economists_address_crisis&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Dr. Hamilton- Calculated Tisk today published a graph showing quartly Mortgage Equity Withdrawal rates (MEW) from data from the FED’s James Kennedy…
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_pMscxxELHEg/SOorqFuvg6I/AAAAAAAADho/3m3HtcTpWP4/s1600-h/KennedyMEWQ22008.jpg
What’s interesting, is that MEW amounted to about $700 Billion/year for 2004-2006, but has declined to almost zero. By my reconning, with an M2 money velocity of 2, and assumption that all the withdrawn money was spent, we could conclude that GDP has declined 10% in the last two years just due to the decline in MEW…
What gives with the BEA GDP numbers?
Why hasn’t the BEA or the FED done a survey to find out where all the extracted money went?
If you’ve watched the previous debates, you’ve noticed the Perception Analyzer at the bottom of the screen. It records the reactions of about 30 “uncommitted” voters – but some say your brain can’t devote its full attention to what the debaters are saying and what you’re seeing.[url=http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-talk-cnn-debateoct07,0,7565415.story]More..[/url]
by proxrte101a
Thanks Arnold Kling, your essay “My Fantasy Testimony” was succinct and mellifluous, two adjectives that I rarely associate with economic writing. Thanks for the link… BRAVO!
Thanks for that. I happened to catch a parallel roundtable on C-Span today called The committee for responsible Federal intervention (look for that title under “recent programs” – the direct link doesn’t seem to work with my browser or bookmarking).
Funny name, but the discussion was interesting and IMO, of high quality.