I would like to join Felix Salmon [1],
[2]
in suggesting that Dean Baker has mischaracterized both Fed Chair Ben Bernanke’s remarks to the Congress as well as the substantive policy questions on the table.
Author Archives: James_Hamilton
Bernanke on the deficit
In testimony before the Senate Budget Committee yesterday, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke once again tells it like it is.
What’s bringing oil prices down?
Darn hard to talk about this without bringing in the speculators.
Housing market review
Our local newspaper, the San Diego Union Tribune, has a big article this morning on the housing market. Among other things, this features some thoughts from yours truly and a foray into multimedia publishing.
The distribution of world income
One of the most profound questions in economics is why are some countries rich and others poor?
The New Deal and the Great Depression
Like the folks writing at Mahalanobis, Marginal Revolution and Free Exchange, I was rather surprised to see Berkeley Professor Brad DeLong claim, “A normal person would not argue that the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression.” Since Brad is a smart guy, I think it might be time for me to acknowledge my freakiness.
Recession probability
Yet another tool to try to assess the probability of a recession.
Combining forecasts
I have been suggesting that the best statistical approach, when confronted with conflicting signals such as the employment estimates from the BLS payroll survey, the separate BLS household survey, or the huge database from the private company Automatic Data Processing, is not to selectively throw some of the data out but rather to combine the different measures. Judging from some of the comments this suggestion has received both
Employment still holding up (I think)
Another week of some wildly contradictory employment indicators.
December auto sales
Auto sales data released today look just great, as long as your name is Toyota.