From Alec Phillips/Goldman Sachs today (not online):
…the Treasury bill market is clearly indicating concern about upcoming debt ceiling deadlines …
Policy Uncertainty: October 1, 2013
A snapshot for those who argue that policy uncertainty is slowing down the economy.
Who’s afraid of the big bad taper?
Those of us who believed that the Fed’s program of large-scale asset purchases had only a modest effect on long-term interest rates seem to have some explaining to do.
Time to Prepare for Government Closure
Debt Ceiling Watch
From WSJ, a picture of rising risk perception surrounding a debt ceiling crisis:
Wisconsin’s Governor Walker Touts Alternate Employment Series
Makes little impact on trend relative to promise, and relative to the Nation
The Absolute Funniest Thing I Have Read This Year
From Ed (We Are Not in a Recession) Lazear and Keith Hennessey, “Bush ended financial crisis before Obama took office — three important truths about 2008”, FoxNews (9/16):
Ironies Abound: Destroying the Village to Save It
I find it strange that self-avowed patriotic Americans are willing to shut down the government, breach the debt ceiling, and throw the world economy into tumult, when those same self-avowed patriots have been asserting that policy uncertainty has slowed down the economy. Let’s stipulate for the sake of argument policy uncertainty has been an important determinant of slow growth [0]; when do we see the spikes in policy uncertainty?
Some Selected State and National Employment Indicators
The BLS released today estimates for August state employment. In Figure 1 below, I show US, Wisconsin, Minnesota and California private nonfarm payroll employment figures, normalized to January 2011, when the governors of the three states took office.
GDP Growth and the Change in the Cyclically Adjusted Budget Balance
Countries that increase the structural budget balance the most have experienced the slowest growth. Here is the scatter plot for the 2008-2012 period.