The net job loss in the December nonfarm payroll (NFP) is unwelcome news, but given the (upward) revision in the November figure, one shouldn’t think of this number as fixed. Figure 1 shows various employment series.
Reserves Are Revised Upward, the Dollar Share Declines
Perhaps the most startling thing about the new COFER data on reserves released by the IMF is not the declining dollar share in total reserves, but rather the fact that reserves have risen relative to where we thought they were [0]. The change is entirely due to the upward revision in unallocated reserves by emerging market and LDC central banks. This point is shown in Figure 1.
Bernanke grades the Fed
Fed Chair Ben Bernanke’s observations on monetary policy and the housing bubble have received a lot of attention. Like many other commentators (e.g., Arnold Kling, Paul Krugman, and Free Exchange), I agree with Bernanke’s conclusions, but only up to a point.
Guest Contribution: Monetary Policy and Asset Bubbles in 2010
By Joseph E. Gagnon
Today, we’re fortunate to have Joe Gagnon, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, as a guest contributor.
In his speech at the American Economic Association yesterday, Ben Bernanke said that monetary policy played at most a small role in the U.S. housing bubble and that financial regulatory policy is the appropriate tool for preventing harmful asset price bubbles in the future. I agree with these conclusions, but I suspect that many do not, even within the world of central banking.
Some International Finance at ASSA
I’m not at the ASSA meetings in Atlanta this year, but my coauthor Hiro Ito is presenting our papers (with Joshua Aizenman) in two very interesting sessions on international finance.
Inflation in China
Why hasn’t inflation caught up with a monetary-induced boom in China?
Counterfactuals and the Stimulus, Again
And some lessons from the 1930’s for the 2000’s
John Taylor returns to the topic of how much impact the stimulus package has had on output. The heart of the argument is summarized by his extension of a graph presented in the NYT (and reproduced in this post).
Term deposit facility
On Monday the Federal Reserve proposed a new term deposit facility that would allow the Fed to borrow directly from private institutions. Here I offer some thoughts on how this fits into the Fed’s long-term plans and what its implications for the rest of us might be.
How Important Is Structural Unemployment in the Current Recession/Recovery?
Joseph Lawler at the Spectator distills the Austrian perspective on the sources of current unemployment.
The Prospects for Global Imbalances: A View from the IMF
Following up on recent posts ([1], [2], [3], [4], [5] [6]) Here’s another take on the prospects for resolving global imbalances, from Olivier Blanchard and Gian Maria Milesi Ferretti, “Global Imbalances: In Midstream?” Staff Position Note 09/29 (Dec. 22, 2009):
IV.B. Lower Global Imbalances in the Future
What will happen in the future depends on how long the factors we just listed will be in play [oil price decline, asset price busts, increase in home bias, the hit to durable consumption and investment goods demand].
Below is reproduced the IMF World Economic Outlook‘s October 2009 forecast for current account balances.