I attended the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco two weeks ago at which I heard a very interesting presentation by David Hughes of the Post Carbon Institute. He is more pessimistic about future production potential from U.S. shale gas and tight oil formations than some other analysts. Here I report some of the data on tight oil production that led to his conclusion.
Guest Contribution: “An assessment of the US jobless recovery through a non-linear Okun’s law”
Today, we are fortunate to have a guest contribution written by Laurent Ferrara (EconomiX-CNRS, University Paris West) and
and Valérie Mignon (EconomiX-CNRS, University Paris West and CEPII).
Heritage on Gun Control
From their website:
The wake of a violent tragedy is an appropriate time for reflection, investigation, prayer, and the promotion of healing. It is a particularly inappropriate time for political opportunism. …
Heritage at the Cutting Edge
The Heritage Foundation’s blog criticizes my recent post thusly:
[Chinn] ignores the fact that Heritage Foundation economists, like most academic macroeconomists, have put away the old Keynesian model in favor of modern alternatives.
I thought it useful to see some of this advanced analysis in action at Heritage. From Heritage Foundation’s Ron Utt — admittedly a long time ago (2008!):
Guest Contribution: “Inflation Responses to Commodity Price Shocks – How and Why Do Countries Differ?”
Today, we are fortunate to have a guest contribution from Gaston Gelos, Advisor in the IMF’s Institute for Capacity Development, and Yulia Ustyugova, Economist in the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Department.
U.S. government profits from AIG bailout
A key player in the financial crisis was insurance giant AIG, which sold a huge volume of credit default swaps supposedly protecting buyers of mortgage-backed securities from losses due to default. But AIG had nowhere near the capital necessary to honor these guarantees when things went bad, and much of AIG’s liabilities ended up being picked up by the Fed and the Treasury. On Tuesday the U.S. Treasury announced that it had sold the last of the common shares in AIG that it had acquired as compensation for its emergency assistance to AIG and reported that the Treasury and the Fed had together earned a profit of $22.7 billion as a result of their assistance to AIG. I was curious to take a look at how this story ended up having a happy ending.
Conditional Inflation Targeting in Effect
Nearly a year ago, Jeffry Frieden and I called for Conditional Inflation Targeting. Today, policy seems to have turned toward that direction. From today’s statement from the FOMC:
The Slow Growth in Investment
One of the puzzles of the post-crisis period is why investment has been so slow. Some would want to resort to stories of uncertainty. Is there something to this idea? Figure 1 depicts the gross investment to net capital stock.
Trillion dollar platinum coin
Here’s one of the wilder suggestions floating around for what the President could do if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling.
Why Worry about the Fiscal Slope?
Lessons from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA)
Or, cognitive dissonance in the conservative world