I await June figures with bated breath. From NOAA:
Still in Search of Inflationary Expectations
Given concerns about large budget deficits and quantitative easing feeding into inflation even as actual inflation was falling, I wondered what standard measures indicated. This follows up on the same question I posed in May of last year.
Bob Hall on financial frictions
Via Mark Thoma and Arnold Kling, the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis published an interview with Stanford Professor Robert Hall. The interview is terrific not just because Bob is a very smart guy, but also because interviewer Douglas Clement did a great job choosing the right questions. The whole thing’s worth reading, but I wanted to focus today on Bob’s comments on the role of financial frictions in the crisis and policy options to address them.
A Specter is Haunting America
…The specter of fiscal mindlessness
I’m just back from two weeks in Europe. During that time, growth indicators have signaled a slowdown [0] in the midst of a massive negative output gap [1], while a substantial bloc in the Congress refuses to think in a sensible fashion about fiscal policy. This point is most forcefully illustrated by the inability of the Senate to move forward on extending unemployment insurance. (It makes me wonder if some were asking the question, “Are there no poorhouses?”)
No double dip
Although many people are concerned about the possibility of a second economic downturn, I continue to see an economy that is growing, albeit significantly more slowly than we would have wanted.
Jobless recoveries
Also in town for last week’s International Symposium on Forecasting was Bill Gavin from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. I had an interesting discussion with him about changes over time in U.S. employment dynamics that I wanted to share with our readers.
EIA: The China Syndrome
We’re pleased to feature another post from Steven Kopits of Douglas-Westwood, this time on the EIA’s oil demand outlook.
China’s Rebalancing
From Arthur Kroeber, in China Economic Quarterly “Economic rebalancing —
Twin peaks: fiscal and financial reform” [not online]:
Identifying business cycles
The 30th Annual International Symposium on Forecasting was held in San Diego last week. Among the many interesting presentations was Princeton Professor Mark Watson’s discussion of estimating business cycle turning points using a large number of indicators.
Views on Rebalancing the Global economy
VoxEU has released a primer on rebalancing the global economy here, edited by Stijn Claessens, Simon J Evenett and Bernard Hoekman. For those interested in the political feasibility of rebalancing, Jeff Frieden holds forth on “The political economy of rebalancing”. The table of contents for the entire book is here.