Last week we received positive readings for some key economic indicators. But I still see plenty to worry about.
Author Archives: James_Hamilton
Regulating compensation in the banking sector
I see a good case for this, but also some big things to worry about.
Scott Sumner on the Fed’s mistakes
The Cato Institute is hosting a discussion this month of the extent to which monetary policy may have contributed to our current economic problems. In the lead essay that appeared on Monday, Professor Scott Sumner of Bentley University suggested that the Fed erred in allowing nominal GDP to grow as slowly as it did.
My response
appeared this morning. I agree that faster growth of nominal GDP would have been a good thing, but argue that, particularly if you start the clock in the fall of 2008, the Fed lacked the tools to prevent a decline in nominal GDP.
Guest contribution from Michael Dueker on the economic recovery
Michael Dueker is Head Economist for North America at Russell Investments and a member of the Blue Chip forecasting panel. In February of 2008 he warned Econbrowser readers that it appeared unlikely that the economy was going to escape the slowdown without a recession. In December of 2008, he predicted in this forum that the recession would last until July or August of 2009, but that employment growth would not resume until March of 2010.
With that track record, we were very interested to learn the latest macroeconomic predictions stemming from Russell’s Business Cycle Index, subject to the disclaimer that the content
does not constitute investment advice or projections of the stock market or any specific investment.
Supply and demand for judicial services
I’ve been trying to understand changes over time in the California state budget, though the data are presented in a way that makes that extremely difficult to do. I did spend enough time to discover one component of the budget that seems to have grown at a pretty healthy pace if you look at the last decade as a whole.
Furloughed professors
The University of California may say I’m just taking a few days off. That’s not how I see it.
Car sales up, but for how long?
August auto sales provided the strongest signal of an economic rebound that we’ve seen yet. But August is so yesterday.
Econbrowser Emoticon shifts to neutral
| Date | Status |
|---|---|
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Sep 13, 2006 |
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| Feb 21, 2007 | 
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| Apr 25, 2007 | 
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| Jun 27, 2007 |
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| Oct 5, 2007 |
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| Jan 4, 2008 |
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| Aug 30, 2009 |
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If you’ve only been following Econbrowser since 2008, you may have thought that the crabby countenance in the upper-right corner of our main page was a permanent fixture, conveying our general grumpiness about the state of the economy or perhaps life in general. Despite having been stuck in the pessimistic mode for quite some time now, the emoticon was in fact always intended to be a dynamic feature, adjusted from time to time to provide readers with our overall impression of incoming data. The table on the left provides links to each occasion that our Little Econ Watcher’s countenance has changed in the past.
Last week’s data persuaded me to move the Econbrowser Emoticon back into neutral, signifying that I now judge overall output to be growing slowly rather than declining. Here are details on the evidence that prompted this change in assessment, and what it signifies.
$9 trillion– what, me worry?
Paul Krugman may not be that concerned by the Obama administration’s new projection that the unified federal budget deficits will sum to $9 trillion dollars over the next 10 years. But I am.
Good news on house prices
I was happy and surprised to see that the nominal
S&P/Case-Shiller seasonally adjusted Home Price Index rose by 0.75% in June for a composite of 20 U.S. metropolitan areas.