That’s the title of a Bloomberg article yesterday. Every few years, there’s talk about concerted action to weaken the dollar, as in 2015. There’s good reason to wish for a weaker dollar at various times — a strong dollar and high interest rates strain emerging market external balances. But would such action matter? Here’s a look at the dollar and some covariates.
Category Archives: saving
Guest Contribution: “Covid-induced precautionary saving in the US: the role of unemployment rate”
Today, we are pleased to present a guest contribution written by Valerio Ercolani, from the Directorate General for Economics, Statistics and Research at the Bank of Italy. The views expressed in this note represent that of the author and not necessarily reflect those of Bank of Italy.
Factors in low real interest rates
The real return on long-term government bonds has dropped steadily over the last 30 years, falling from values around 4% to something closer to zero or even negative for many countries today. What accounts for this remarkable development, and what are the prospects for this situation to continue?
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Musings on the Trade Release and Consumption Theory
Last week’s trade release induced some wide-ranging thoughts, that spurred more questions than answers. In an experimental post, I’ll pose some questions that I hope readers will help me answer.
Saving Glut Redux
Bernanke recaps his interpretation of the explanation for global imbalances. Is it any more convincing than the first time?
International Economics at the AEA/ASSA: Selected Items
The Allied Social Sciences Association (incorporating the AEA, the Econometric Society, the International Economics and Finance Society and many other groups) meetings took place in Chicago this last weekend. I wasn’t able to go to that many sessions, but I did attend a few related to international issues.
Oil shocks and personal saving
Mark Thoma notes some interesting thoughts by Harvard professor Martin Feldstein on why the oil shock of 2005 was not more disruptive.
How important is saving?
Tyler Cowen of
Marginal Revolution (along with a number of my own readers) has asked about
this statement by Michael Mandel:
But you said that more saving was a good thing
After many of us have been arguing for some time that an increase in the U.S. personal saving rate was key for promoting long-run growth and reducing the trade deficit, the American consumer finally obliged with a 0.5% drop in consumption spending in August. But analysts such as Angry Bear and Macroblog see this as an ominous development. So which is right– is more saving a good thing or a bad thing for the economy?
Which came first: the savings chicken or the deficit egg?
David Altig at Macroblog raises some
very thoughtful questions about the relation between the drop in the U.S. saving rate and the
current account deficit.