Back in late April, I participated in panel “Europe at the Crossroads: The Euro Crisis and the Future of European Integration” (video). There’re two graphs from my presentation I’d like to highlight, as they remain relevant even as the eurozone lurches into de facto recession [0].
Aggregate factors in the price of oil
It seems that no matter what financial series you look at, there’s a similar pattern of ups and downs over the last few years. I was curious to get a quick quantitative impression of how much of a contribution aggregate factors have been making to recent movements in the price of oil.
Some Thoughts on the Employment Release
The employment release for May has raised concern, and rightly so, amongst policymakers. Figure 1 shows that nonfarm payroll employment growth has tailed off to 0.6% m/m, and 0.9% on a three month basis (both annualized, in log differences). Other labor indicators from the household survey are slightly more positive.
Markets see bad news
May was a bad month for U.S. stocks. June started out worse, with the S&P500 on Friday down 9% from where it stood at the beginning of May. That puts us back about where we started the year in January, though still significantly above last fall’s lows.
The Recall in Wisconsin: Summary Statistics
TPM average of polls for Wisconsin governor recall, Barrett vs. Walker: 48.5 to 49.7.
China and the Impending Global Slowdown
Even before the newest portents of a slowdown, [0] it was clear that 2012 gains in world output were going to be highly reliant on Chinese growth. Figure 1 shows that the Eurozone switches to a net drag on world growth. China’s contribution is thus a much larger share of total world growth.
Links for 2012-05-30
Quick links to a few items of interest.
Alexander Field (and Santayana) on Financial Regulation
As some in policy circles advocate unilateral financial disarmament, I think it is useful to think about what history tells us about the financial crisis of 2008, which seems to have already receded in people’s collective consciousness. Here I turn to Alexander Field’s new volume on the Great Depression, A Great Leap Forward. From Chapter 10, “Financial Fragility and Recovery”:
The regulatory or policy failure was not simply or primarily a matter of interest rate policy. Rather it was a failure to control, or really be interested in controlling, the growth of leverage. …
Commodity index funds and oil prices
In my previous post
I described a new research paper with University of Chicago Professor Cynthia Wu on the Effects of Index-Fund Investing on Commodity Futures Prices. Previously I discussed what we found for the prices of agricultural commodities. Here I review our findings about oil prices.
Dispatches XXIII: Wisconsin Government Diverts Funds from Foreclosure Relief
Unsurprising to me, but still of note.
From ProPublica, insight into Wisconsin (among other states):
States have diverted $974 million from this year’s landmark mortgage settlement to pay down budget deficits or fund programs unrelated to the foreclosure crisis, according to a ProPublica analysis. That’s nearly forty percent of the $2.5 billion in penalties paid to the states under the agreement.