In last Thursday’s post, John Kitchen recounted our joint work on what amount of foreign financing would be required to make consistent projections of government debt, and short and long term interest rates. That article from International Finance is now freely available on the Council on Foreign Relations website here.
Author Archives: Menzie Chinn
“The Eurozone in Crisis: Origins and Prospects”
Time to breathe a sigh of relief, with resolution of the Greek bailout? Not so fast. Greece is likely to need re-adjustments to its plan [0] Plenty of challenges remain in the eurozone; PIMCO’s El-Erian says Portugal is next [1]. In fact, as Jeffry Frieden and I argue, the resolution of the problems facing eurozone policymakers is likely to be contentious and prolonged. From an article forthcoming in the Spring issue of the La Follette Policy Report, by me and Jeffry Frieden (since the article is not yet published, the working paper version is here):
Guest Contribution: “Financing U.S. Debt”
In a Guest Contribution today, John Kitchen (U.S. Treasury, formerly Chief Economist, Office of Management and Budget) addresses the issue of “Financing U.S. Debt: Is There Enough Money in the World — and at What Cost?”. The comments are based on a paper recently published in International Finance (Winter 2011), co-authored with Menzie Chinn. The views expressed are the author’s and do not represent the views of the U.S. Treasury.
“Scoring” the Romney Economic Plan
Well, this could be a short blogpost, because in Mitt Romney’s words, “frankly it can’t be scored” [The Hill]. However, I think it of interest to consider what it would take to make the Romney plan deficit neutral, as he has argued it would be.
The Amazing Prescience of the Capitol Steps
I’ve been a fan of the Capitol Steps for decades now, but only recently have I fully appreciated the prescience of their musical insights. I hope Econbrowser readers will too, by singing along to this twenty year old song, “Favored Right Wing” [sample], sung to the tune of “My favorite things”. (This song is so old, that no complete online version exists, and I had to laboriously transcribe the words by hand(!), so apologies if there are a couple errors.)
The February Employment Release
I’m sure there’s a way to spin the February employment release in a negative way — see for instance JEC Republican vice-chair Brady’s take here — but I think it looks pretty good for a recovery after a combination financial crisis/housing bust/recession. [1]
Wisconsin Employment Climbs … to 12,500 below January 2011 Levels
The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development today released figures for January employment revised to account for benchmark revisions. Nonfarm payroll employment and nonfarm private employment both rose. But the latter just barely exceeded levels of a year previous, while nonfarm payroll employment fell short.
Re-Examining that “Massive Stimulus”
I keep on seeing references to “massive stimulus”, so much I have this feeling of innumeracy everwhere. Here’s one example, provided by a commenter on Free Exchange the day before yesterday, responding to the linked article of Brad Delong:
Global Land Sea Anomaly, Global Climate Change, etc.
Since my last post on government spending increase (it’s actually decreasing) was hijacked by those focused on denying the impact of human activity on global climate, I thought it useful to recap the global land sea anomaly [0]. It’s also useful to recall that on one side is Texas Governor Perry [1], and the other side the National Academy of Sciences [2]. I think that dichotomy speaks volumes.
The “Ever Expanding” Government Illustrated, Part III
Following up on these two previous posts [1] [2], I decided to confront some views commonly held in certain circles with some actual data. To summarize:
- Real government nondefense spending on goods and services is declining, and is declining relative to real GDP.
- The ratio of government outlays to nominal potential GDP is declining.
- Total civilian government employment is declining, and is declining as a share of total nonfarm employment.