I’ve been a fan of the Capitol Steps for decades now, but only recently have I fully appreciated the prescience of their musical insights. I hope Econbrowser readers will too, by singing along to this twenty year old song, “Favored Right Wing” [sample], sung to the tune of “My favorite things”. (This song is so old, that no complete online version exists, and I had to laboriously transcribe the words by hand(!), so apologies if there are a couple errors.)
2012 Econbrowser NCAA tournament challenge
Enough on oil prices and the Fed. I know what you’ve all really been waiting for is the 2012 Econbrowser NCAA tournament challenge, where you can test your skills (and luck) at predicting the outcomes of the U.S. college men’s basketball tournament. All you have to do is go to the Econbrowser group at ESPN, do some minor registering to create a free ESPN account if you haven’t used that site before, and make your picks for the winners of each game. Just make sure you complete your entry before Thursday, because the Econbrowser group only allows predictions before the tournament begins. And be forewarned that some of the people who enter this group really know what they’re doing!
Sterilized quantitative easing
Jon Hilsenrath of the Wall Street Journal reported last week that Federal Reserve officials are evaluating the possibility of a measure that the journal describes as “sterilized” quantitative easing. How would this work, and what would it be intended to accomplish?
The February Employment Release
I’m sure there’s a way to spin the February employment release in a negative way — see for instance JEC Republican vice-chair Brady’s take here — but I think it looks pretty good for a recovery after a combination financial crisis/housing bust/recession. [1]
Wisconsin Employment Climbs … to 12,500 below January 2011 Levels
The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development today released figures for January employment revised to account for benchmark revisions. Nonfarm payroll employment and nonfarm private employment both rose. But the latter just barely exceeded levels of a year previous, while nonfarm payroll employment fell short.
Re-Examining that “Massive Stimulus”
I keep on seeing references to “massive stimulus”, so much I have this feeling of innumeracy everwhere. Here’s one example, provided by a commenter on Free Exchange the day before yesterday, responding to the linked article of Brad Delong:
Oil prices and the U.S. economy
Here’s why I believe that the current high price of oil is not enough to derail the U.S. economic recovery.
The power of habit
Charles Duhigg has a very interesting new book called The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business.
Global Land Sea Anomaly, Global Climate Change, etc.
Since my last post on government spending increase (it’s actually decreasing) was hijacked by those focused on denying the impact of human activity on global climate, I thought it useful to recap the global land sea anomaly [0]. It’s also useful to recall that on one side is Texas Governor Perry [1], and the other side the National Academy of Sciences [2]. I think that dichotomy speaks volumes.
The “Ever Expanding” Government Illustrated, Part III
Following up on these two previous posts [1] [2], I decided to confront some views commonly held in certain circles with some actual data. To summarize:
- Real government nondefense spending on goods and services is declining, and is declining relative to real GDP.
- The ratio of government outlays to nominal potential GDP is declining.
- Total civilian government employment is declining, and is declining as a share of total nonfarm employment.