From National Journal (h/t Ezra Klein):
The House Agriculture Committee endorsed a letter this week to Budget Chairman Paul Ryan arguing that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps low-income Americans purchase food, would make a better target for cuts than automatic subsidies to farms.
Yesterday’s NYT article, Crises in Japan Ripple Across the Global Economy noted:
In the wake of Japan’s cascading disasters, signs of economic loss can be found in many corners of the globe, from Sendai, on the battered Japanese coast, to Paris to Marion, Ark.
And Walker (Still) Plans No-Bid Sales of Power Plants, the $7.5 million worth of damages to the Capitol building becomes $347,000 (maybe), and the expanding politicization of the civil service.
Economy-wide Impacts
From Wisconsin State Journal:
Gov. Scott Walker’s plans to balance the state budget by cutting spending and public workers’ take-home pay will slow the state’s economic recovery, according to projections by a UW-Madison economist.
A dominant class of economic theories is built on the assumption that prices respond only sluggishly to new economic conditions. It’s an interesting challenge to try to reconcile that premise with what we see in the data.
From Reuters:
A coordinated move by central banks of rich nations to stabilize the yen’s value appeared to be having a decisive effect on Friday, after a sharp rise in the yen after Japan’s devastating earthquake and nuclear crisis raised fears about the global economy.
Recent commentary on whether real interest rates rose during the Reagan era tax cuts — Kling responding to Krugman — impelled me to look at the data…
I spent the better part of last Friday at an Institute for Research on Poverty conference, entitled “Employment Prospects for Lower Wage Workers: Easing the Implications of a Slow Recovery Conference”. It was a tremendous learning experience for me (since I’m not a labor economist), and a chance to be reminded of the full enormity of the challenges facing policymakers, as the economy limps in a fitful recovery, with little succor from further aggregate demand stimulus measures, and threatened by supply shocks as well as incoherence in fiscal policymaking. I mentioned the conference in a post last week, but the presentations and papers are now online.
I wanted to add a few quick additional comments to Ilan Noy’s reflections on the possible economic implications of the tragedy in Japan.
By Ilan Noy
Today, we’re fortunate to have Ilan Noy, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Hawai’i, as a Guest Contributor.
In the last 14 months, we have seen a spate of very large earthquakes which began with the unprecedented devastation caused by the earthquake in Haiti (1/10/10) — the most destructive natural disaster in modern history (relative to national population), continued with the unusually strong earthquake in Chile (2/27/10), to the most recent events generated by the earthquake in Sendai, Japan.
If you’re not too busy forecasting oil prices and the stock market, try your hand at the 2011 Econbrowser NCAA tournament challenge. 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.