There’s been a lot of breast beating over the fact that the Administration underestimated the severity of the downturn. From this has come a lot of confused argument — sometimes not internally consistent — over whether this invalidates the usefulness of the stimulus package, whether the stimulus worsened the economic outlook, etc. I’ll dispense with the clearly economically illogical arguments and try to tease out what is the “surprise” element in the 2009Q1 figures, and from that infer how much worse the economy was relative to what private sector forecasters predicted, conditional upon the passage of the ARRA.
Author Archives: Menzie Chinn
Ed Lazear on the Stimulus Package
From the WSJ editorial page:
Only a small share of the spending will occur in 2009, even though Keynesians would argue that stimulus spending should be frontloaded to kick-start growth. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the largest share of the spending will occur in 2010, with the amount in 2011 being slightly larger than in 2009. Again, the timing exacerbates the problem: It will be tough to cut back on spending written into budgets as far out as 2011.
Global Financial Stress
Several months ago, I discussed the indicators of financial stress developed by the IMF in two posts [1] [2]. The working paper documenting and extending the results in the World Economic Outlook has just been released.
The Informational Content of the OECD Leading Indicators
Sunday’s NYT had a great interactive graphics by Amanda Cox detailing the dynamics of recessions and recoveries. One interesting graph pertained to the OECD Leading Indicators:
Waxman-Markey and the Great Depression II?
“With the passage of Cap and Trade there is a good chance that unemployment will be worse than 1933 by the end of 2010.”
So writes an Econbrowser reader. Well, anything can happen, but that is not the outcome I predict. Nor the CBO, EPA, and other informed analysts.
Back to the Stimulus Debate: W, Timing, the States, and Baselines
A “W” Recession?
Martin Feldstein has recently raised the possibility that we might experience a relapse into recession (a beautiful symmetrical W), with the next dip in 2010. In my view, this means (1) we should have opted for a bigger and better composed stimulus package, and (2) the timing of expenditures in the stimulus package might not be as problematic as many commentators have indicated. From Bloomberg:
The Newest Data on Foreign Exchange Reserves
The IMF has released its estimates for 2009Q1 reserves (COFER data). Below I update and extend my recent post on the dollar as a reserve currency.
New Papers on International Finance: Crises, Puzzles, and Exchange Rates
Summertime is conference season, especially for those of us who don’t live close to a major airport hub. The first conference I attended was the NBER’s International Seminar on Macroeconomics, co-organized by Lucrezia Reichlin and Ken West. The conference was broken up into several sections: Financial Crises, International Economic Puzzles, Exchange Rates and Financial Development. Lot’s of interesting papers, and plenty of stimulating discussion. I can’t do justice to the proceedings, but I can provide the summaries of the papers.
So Much for “Exorbitant Privilege” and “Dark Matter” As Well: Anticipating the 2008 NIIP Release
In my last post, I cited Jeff Frankel’s keynote speech from a recent Bank of Canada-ECB workshop. He also pointed to the end of “Exorbitant Privilege” and “Dark Matter”, and other arguments of American exceptionalism. I think we’ll see resounding evidence of this in Friday’s release of the US end-2008 Net International Investment Position (NIIP).
Update on US Exports and Imports: The Collapse Continues
Here’s an update of US imports and export behavior. The trade collapse remarked upon a couple of months ago is still in play.