From Milwaukee Sentinel Journal:
A filmmaker released a video Thursday that shows Gov. Scott Walker saying he would use “divide and conquer” as a strategy against unions.
The Unbearable Lightweightness of Being David Brooks
Or, I know columnists have deadlines, but really…
In Tuesday’s NYT column, entitled “The Structural Revolution”, David Brooks writes:
Conditional Inflation Now!
Back in January, Jeffry Frieden and I argued for higher inflation, conditioned on macro conditions, in a Foreign Policy article. The roster of economists in favor expands: Nobel laureates Rob Engle and Paul Krugman join Chicago Fed President Charles Evans, for the US.
The War on Data Collection
Ignorance is bliss edition.
From BusinessWeek:
[The Census Bureau, BEA and BLS] have always had to fight for more funding. Now they may have to fight just to keep their budgets intact. As part of $19 billion in nondefense discretionary cuts in Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget—recently passed by the House of Representatives—the agencies are likely to get less funding.
Yes, the Fed could produce a higher inflation rate
From the responses to my remarks last week on monetary policy, I see that my words were interpreted by some readers differently than I’d intended, for which I apologize. Let me try again.
More on Governor Romney’s 500,000 job creation target, expressed as a percentage growth rate
Governor Romney has said that 500,000 is the monthly job creation he expects as normal during a recovery [1]. It actually last happened in May 2010 but is otherwise pretty rare. Reader Rick Stryker argues that the 500K should be expressed in percentage terms, accounting for the size of employment. Nonetheless, breaching the equivalent in percentage terms never happened during the eight years of the G.W. Bush administrations.
A Few Observations on the April Employment Situation
According to the BLS, nonfarm employment rose only 115,000, as government payrolls shed 15,000. The household series adjusted to conform to the NFP concept indicates an additional 1.6 million employed relative to the official series. Private sector employment now exceeds levels of 2009M01, while aggregate hours worked exceeds by 1.9% (in log terms). With revisions to the February and March data, average employment growth is 207 thousand in the first four months, as compared to 210 thousand, from the first three months indicated in the March release.
Thinking about the Double Dip Recession in the UK
The news is well-known now: There the UK is in the first double dip recession since 1975 thanks to among other things the government’s contractionary fiscal policies. This recovery is in fact worse than that of the Great Depression [Macroscope] Here are three other observations that might not be so obvious: (1) Growth has been lackluster ever since the election of the coalition government in May 2010; (2) growth under the program of austerity has compared poorly against the (admittedly insufficiently stimulative) fiscal policy framework in the US, and; (3) UK GDP growth has been lackluster even with the depreciated pound, which is interesting given that exchange rates can act as a shock absorber.
Should the Fed do more?
Johns Hopkins University Professor Larry Ball, Princeton Professor Paul Krugman, U.C. Berkeley Professor Brad DeLong, University of Oregon Professor Tim Duy and Texas State University Professor David Beckworth are among those recently arguing that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is neglecting his own earlier academic insights into what the central bank should be doing in a situation such as the United States presently finds itself. Here’s what I think they’re overlooking.
No Need to Wait until June 5
From WisPolitics today:
Walker warned that job losses might again ramp up in Wisconsin if either Barrett or Falk are elected in the June 5 recall…