The economic data arriving during the last week have been deeply discouraging, though are slightly less grim than some may have been concluding.
Author Archives: James_Hamilton
Recommendations for economic policy
An exchange I had last week with Econbrowser reader (and world-renowned scholar) Simon van Norden may be of interest to broader readers, so I lift it here from the comments:
Fundamentals, speculation, and oil prices
I was in Washington DC last week, arriving right after the earthquake and getting out of town just before Irene, to attend a conference on commodity markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Here are some of the remarks I made at the conference on the role of speculation and fundamentals in recent oil price movements.
Where can America find more income and jobs?
In January 2008, ExxonMobil and Norway’s Statoil announced a promising discovery in the Julia Field in the Gulf of Mexico that may contain a billion barrels of oil. In October of that year, Exxon applied for a 5-year extension of the lease for time to develop a suitable development plan. To the company’s surprise, the U.S. Department of Interior denied the request in February 2009, and has continued to turn down subsequent appeals. The company has
filed a lawsuit to have the decision overturned.
Waiting for the Fed to act
Economic conditions are deteriorating. Here’s how and when the Fed might intervene.
Not dead yet
We had a couple of pretty scary economic developments last week, but as far as I can tell, we’re still standing.
Economic consequences of recent oil price changes
Earlier this year, disruptions in Libya and the resurgence of demand from the emerging economies sent oil prices up sharply, a development that many economists believe contributed to the slow growth for 2011:H1. The chaotic markets of the last few weeks saw oil prices drop back down to where they had been in December. Will that be enough to revive the struggling U.S. economy? There is some evidence suggesting that it may be too late.
Losing your AAA
On Friday, Standard & Poor’s, one of the three main credit rating agencies, downgraded U.S. Treasury debt from AAA to AA+, citing doubts about the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions in being able to deal with the rising debt burden by the middle of the decade. It’s been a wild ride for equity and commodity markets ever since.
Index funds and commodity prices
There has been a lot of growth over the last decade in funds that take long positions in commodity futures contracts in order to offer investors an asset that follows raw commodity prices. I’ve been looking into some of the data that have been used to measure the size of those positions.
More on the debt ceiling aftermath
Here are interviews I did earlier this week on the debt deal: