From the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal yesterday (h/t TPM):
Gov. Scott Walker has called off plans to sign the 2011-’13 budget bill at a private Green Bay-area company run by an executive with eight felony convictions, a spokesman announced today.
Yuan Schizophrenia
Or more on China-U.S. exchange rate pass through
Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal illustrated the conflicted nature of American views regarding real yuan appreciation. The front page article by Hilsenrath, Burkitt and Holmes argued “Change in China Hits U.S. Purse”. On the back page of the C section was a countering article, “No appreciation for the rising yuan”, by Orlik, that noted the moderate impact on prices of imported goods from China.
And Policymakers Are Proposing to Withdraw Stimulus?
Making jobs priority one
It is looking unlikely that there will be more stimulus from either fiscal policy or monetary policy. Former President Bill Clinton has called for suggestions for other policy options that might be helpful. Here are a few ideas along those lines.
Guest Contribution: The Fiscal Stimulus in 2009-11
Trade Openness, Fiscal Space and Exchange Rate Adjustment
Today, we are fortunate to have as guest contributors Joshua Aizenman of UC Santa Cruz and Yothin Jinjarak of the School of Oriental and African Studies of London University.
This post draws upon Aizenman and Jinjarak (2011).
Monetary policy since 2000
I just returned from the annual conference of the
Society for Financial Econometrics
hosted by the University of Chicago. One of the many interesting papers described changes in Federal Reserve policy over time.
When Price Does Not Clear the Market
And other non-Neoclassical tales
Finance and Development has a profile of one of my teachers, Nobel Laureate George Akerlof, written by Prakash Loungani. Akerlof’s views are critical to recall in these times when some individuals think supply and demand are sufficient to answer all policy issues. Akerlof’s research highlighted the role of information asymmetries that prevent prices for setting quantity demanded equal to quantity supplied. From the article
A game of chicken
Making a political game out of the debt ceiling is playing with fire.
Links for 2011-06-13
Some items I found interesting:
- Tyler Cowen outlines what I see as the responsible approach to the U.S. federal fiscal challenges: slow the growth of government spending.
- Some undergraduates at Rutgers University have developed a nice site to track economic indicators. And Bill McBride has an invaluable summary of which ones really matter.
- From the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston: Oil and the Macroeconomy in a Changing World: A Conference Summary.
- The Office of Personnel Management on shifting costs of Postal Service retirement funding to U.S. taxpayers.
- And Glenn Reynolds warns beware of bimbots.
Chinese oil demand
Stuart Staniford notes that the number of trucks and passenger vehicles in China has been growing at about 23% each year.