The U.S. State Department received the application from TransCanada for permission to build the Keystone XL Pipeline Extension over 3 years ago. Today, the White House made a firm decision not to decide just yet, with the State Department indicating that an actual decision is at least another year away.
Nice to see the President is focused like a laser on how to get Americans back to work.
Or Generalissimo Francisco Franco redux.
In “UK: Economic growth, double-dips and the PMI,” (G. Buckley, Deutsche Bank, Nov. 4, 2011, not online):
UK GDP grew by 0.5% qoq in Q3, but the position the economy is in is now officially worse than it was in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Add to this the weakening in the composite PMI
survey for October (particularly the manufacturing report), also published this week, and escalating risks for a sharper euro area recession, and the stage possibly looks set for a much bleaker
picture by the end of this year/start of 2012.
Some infrastructure spending is more stimulative than others.
Today, we are fortunate to have Jay C. Shambaugh of the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University as a guest contributor.
There has been considerable debate lately about why the U.S. economy continues to struggle. Some — notably economists on the right and some Federal Reserve Bank Presidents — have argued that concerns about future taxes and regulation are preventing American businesses from investing and hiring. Other economists have argued that we have inadequate aggregate demand in the economy and that explains slow GDP and employment growth — not fear of future government policy.
From Prakash Loungani’s blog:
A standing-room only audience at the IMF last month heard a presentation by [Menzie] Chinn and [Jeffry] Frieden [on Lost Decades], along with comments from Diane Lim Rogers (Concord Coalition), Gail Cohen (Joint Economic Committee) and Simon Johnson (MIT and Peterson Institute). The forum was moderated by Nobel Prize-winner George Akerlof.
Here I offer some observations on what’s been holding back the recovery.
“…the Risks from Nonbank Intermediation in China,” by Nigel Chalk in IMFDirect.
Many China-watchers looked on in awe in 2009 as the government’s response to the global financial crisis unfolded, causing bank lending as a share of the economy to expand by close to 20 percentage points in less than a year. …
Just a quick observation today, elicited by a question: what has been a consistent source of growth since the recovery began?
Running a little behind, so I decided today to reprint something I wrote 4 years ago as an excuse to call attention to some charts I still think are pretty interesting.
That’s the title of a blogpost by Roosevelt Bowman and Jan J.J. Groen at the New York Fed. The write:
…we examine the role of market uncertainty and currency risk premia in the pace and size of episodes of dollar weakness since 1991. We find that the most recent bout of U.S. dollar declines largely can be attributed to the recovery in global economic activity from the most recent recession.