We tell our students not to read too much into the strength or weakness of a currency. However, the dollar’s trajectory since November 2016 is quite striking.
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Category Archives: deficits
Further Documentation on “Stephen Moore Is a Liar”
Or statistical incompetent, just for the record for the new year.
Views on Fiscal Stimulus Then and Now
Remember when critics wailed about the high cost/per job saved and low multipliers likely under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act? The same set of people do not seem very bothered at all by the relatively small implied output impact of the TCJA produced by any of the reasonable modelers.
Leontiev Lives! In Wisconsin
The MacIver Institute has released new projections of the impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on Wisconsin:
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“We have trade deficits with everybody”
Thus spake the Mr. Trump, on a day that the October trade figures were released, indicating a deteriorating balance.
Figure 1: US trade balance, in billions $, seasonally adjusted (blue). NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: BEA/Census via FRED, and NBER.
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Prepare for Massive Deficits As Far As the Eye Can See
Signs are the putative Republican “deficit hawks” are about to sign away whatever integrity they had. What are the implications for the deficit going forward, keeping in mind the fact we are near or at full employment.
Figure 1: Federal budget balance without automatic stabilizers, as a share of potential GDP (blue), and Federal budget balance as share of actual GDP (red), and baseline forecast Federal budget balance from June CBO forecast (pink), and alternative under Senate budget bill (teal), both as share of projected GDP. NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: CBO, Budget and Economic Outlook: An Update (June 2017), and CBO, Cost Estimate (November 2017), NBER, and author’s calculations.
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No Trigger: The Umpire Strikes Back
The Senate parliamentarian ruled the trigger to prevent a revenue shortfall as unacceptable, thereby temporarily stymieing the bill.
JCT Dynamic Score of the TCJA: $1 Trillion Revenue Loss
And GDP is only averaging a paltry 0.8% above baseline level over 10 year period, given these massive, regressive tax cuts. Revenue effects:
Source: JCT (November 30, 2017).
When Tax Cuts Last in the Congress Bloom’d … and War Loomed
My stint in the Executive Office of the President as a senior economist spanned the last months of the Clinton Administration and the first months of the G.W. Bush Administration. In the first months of 2001, we knew massive tax cuts were coming; we weren’t so sure that we’d be in a long term ground war on the Asian continent.
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A Tax Plan for the Season
The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) has evaluated the distributional impact of the Senate’s plan. CBPP has graphically depicted the impact on households, adjusting the JCT figures to account for the provisions regarding estate taxes:
Source: CBPP.
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