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.
Last week the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac jointly announced changes to the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) with the goal of making it easier for some households to refinance their mortgages at lower interest rates. Here I offer some thoughts on this proposal.
Tabulating Inequality Trends
The CBO released a report on income inequality earlier this week. This means that the “inequality deniers” are having a more difficult time arguing that widening spreads an wages, compensation, or overall income are merely statistical artifacts dreamt up by liberals (see e.g. here). What is of most interest is (i) real after-tax income of the top 1 percentile has risen about 275%, and (ii) the pre-transfers/pre-tax income share of the top 1% has increased most profoundly.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported today that U.S. real GDP grew at an annual rate of 2.5% during the third quarter of 2011. That’s below the average postwar growth rate of 3.2% and well below the 4.3% growth for an average expansion quarter. Even so, it’s better than any of the previous 3 quarters, and better than many analysts had been expecting when the quarter began in July.
The transcript and video for the IMF Book Forum (October 14th) is now online here. Nobel Laureate George Akerlof (UC Berkeley) moderated, Diane Lim Rogers (EconomistMom, Concord Coalition) and Gail Cohen (Joint Economic Committee) were discussants, and Simon Johnson (Baseline Scenario, MIT) provided concluding comments.