I was running out of vocabulary last month to describe just how bad October was for the domestic automakers. But whatever you want to say about October, November was significantly worse.
Yearly Archives: 2008
TIPS yields
Greg Mankiw notes some odd behavior this week in the values reported by the U.S. Treasury for the yields on constant-maturity Treasury Inflation Protected Securities.
Recession Dating: Some People Are Going to Be Surprised
The typical Econbrowser reader might not be surprised at the NBER decision — but some others will. From a May 2008 WSJ article:
“The data are pretty clear that we are not in a recession,” Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Edward Lazear told a meeting of editors and reporters from the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires.
…
“I would be very surprised if the NBER, looking back at this period, would date this as a recession,” Mr. Lazear said. There are even indications that revised first-quarter estimates would be slightly stronger than 0.6%. “The optimists seem to have been closer to right on that than the pessimists,” he said.
Just to reiterate, that quote is from May 2008.
Podcast on the Federal Reserve
I did a long interview today with Tom Keene of Bloomberg Radio on the current recession and Federal Reserve policy. You can listen to it by clicking here.
It’s official
The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research announced today that the eleventh U.S. postwar recession began in December of 2007.
So long, Tanta
Doris Dungey, who had been known to me only as the contributor Tanta to the Calculated Risk blog, has died from cancer at the age of 47.
William Kristol on Economic Theory and Practice
I don’t usually read Bill Kristol’s column, but once in a while, my eyes get caught by a headline (that’s the difference between reading online and “on paper”), and I’ll check out what he has to say. The other day, I read his column “Admit we don’t know” on the current economic crisis that, while not in my mind “wrong”, seemed puzzling to me. Pay attention to the last paragraph (highlighted in bold).
The more the merrier
How many economic-advice-giving organizations does it take to run a White House?
Synchronized Recession, Synchronized Stimulus?
The OECD has just released its forecasts. This follows the recent updated IMF forecasts. Growth is evaporating the industrial countries. What is to be done?
Chinn and Collender on the Obama Stimulus Plan
I discussed current economic conditions and the prospects for the Obama stimulus plan on Kerri Miller’s “Midmorning” show on Minnesota Public Radio today. Capital Gains and Games‘ Stan Collender was also speaking. Here’s a link to the audio.