From Davey, “Twinned Cities Now Following Different Paths,” NY Times today:
“It’s staggering, really, like night and day,” said Lawrence R. Jacobs, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota. “You’ve got two states with the same history, the same culture, the same people — it’s kind of like they’re cousins. And now they’re looking across the border and seeing one world, then seeing something else entirely on the other side.”
From the Economist last week:
Since the financial crisis the European Central Bank (ECB) has ploughed a solitary course, reflecting its unique status as a monetary authority without a state. While other big central banks, notably America’s Federal Reserve, adopted quantitative easing– buying government bonds by creating money– to stimulate recovery, the ECB relied mainly on lowering interest rates and providing unlimited liquidity to banks on longer terms and against worse collateral. But as the Fed phases out its asset-buying programme in 2014, it may be the ECB’s turn to become unorthodox.
By one measure, the ECB may already be there.
Somewhat of a surprise, nonfarm payroll employment increased only 74,000 in December, according to estimates from the BLS. Private NFP increased 84,000.
Today we are fortunate to have a guest contribution written by Jon Frost and Ayako Saiki, econonomists at the De Nederlandsche Bank. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of De Nederlandsche Bank.
Manufacturing output is returning to pre-recession levels, exports are continuing to grow,and the trade balance is shrinking.
From CBO:
…CBO estimates that extending the current EUC program and other related expiring provisions until the end of 2014 would increase inflation-adjusted GDP by 0.2 percent and increase full-time-equivalent employment by 0.2 million in the
fourth quarter of 2014. …
From Tim Duy:
Pencil in somewhat stronger growth in 2014. Pencil in a steady reduction in the pace of asset purchases until the program winds down at the end of the year. Pencil in an extended period of low rates. But also recognize that the tide of monetary policy is now receding– albeit ever so slightly– with the Fed’s first step of ending the asset purchase program.
And from the invaluable Bill McBride: Ten questions for 2014.
Politico Magazine asks “should we really be so optimistic about the year ahead?” Mohamed El-Arian (PIMCO), Jared Bernstein (CBPP), Laurence Kotlikoff (Boston U.), Robert Reich (Berkeley), Menzie Chinn (Wisconsin U.) and Jeffry Frieden (Harvard), Jeffrey Frankel (Harvard) and Dean Baker (CEPR) respond.
That’s the title of a paper coauthored by Matthieu Bussiere (Banque de France), Gong Cheng (Sciences Po), Noemie Lisack (European University Institute) and myself, in which we examine two key questions:
[F]irst, has the accumulation of reserves effectively protected countries during the 2008-09 financial crisis? And second, what explains the pattern of reserve accumulation observed during and after the crisis?
David Kocieniewski of the New York Times is guilty of some outrageously bad journalism in the form of a groundless ad hominem attack on the reputation of two professors for the sole purpose of reinforcing the prejudices of his misinformed readers.