I got a bit angry at accounts of the latest appearance of Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke before the U.S. Congress.
Author Archives: James_Hamilton
Links for 2009-06-26
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has put together some very useful timelines of the financial crisis, if you want a handy reference for what happened when in both the United States and around the world.
The BEA reported that disposable personal income increased 1.6% between April and May. In the absence of the stimulus cuts to personal taxes and increases in social benefit payments, the number would have been 0.2%. Real personal consumption expenditures were up 0.2% for the month, though that leaves the April-May average 0.1% below the January-March average. Calculated Risk, always your go-to source for these matters, sums it up this way:
Usually PCE and Residential Investment (RI) lead the economy out of recession, and right now both remain weak. As households increase their savings rate to repair their balance sheets, it seems unlikely that PCE will increase significantly any time soon.
And via Craig Newmark, earn $11 a day by working in hell.
The leading economic index
The Conference Board Leading Economic Index increased by more than 1% in both April and May. Since I’ve been scratching my head trying to find some confirmation for recent economic optimism, I was curious to take a look at what’s responsible for the favorable reading from the LEI.
Gasoline prices and consumer sentiment
Gasoline prices (in case you’ve been hiding in a cave and didn’t know) have been on something of a roller coaster the last few years. And it looks as though we’re climbing back up another hill at the moment. How much are the recent increases in gas prices likely to weigh down American consumers?
Clive Granger memorial pages
The UCSD Economics Department has set up a remembrance page in honor of Clive Granger. Those of you who contributed such moving remarks here at Econbrowser are invited to enter them also on the UCSD remembrance page, as well as to visit the other material collected there.
Do you see what I see?
I’m still looking for, and still not seeing, the economic recovery that everybody is talking about.
How to lose on a sure-fire bet
There was a wonderful story in today’s WSJ about how some big banks managed to lose some of their hard-earned TARP money.
More on disaggregate bank landing
I’d like to mention two more useful analyses of the disaggregated behavior of bank lending over the last year. The first is from James Kwak at the Baseline Scenario, and the second is a new research paper by Silvio Contessi
and Johanna Francis.
Not a robust recovery
Often after a sharp economic downturn we observe an equally dramatic recovery. But nobody can claim to be seeing that so far in the currently available data.
More on bank lending data
Further evidence on the decline in bank lending.