Since Congress and the President are taking positions on a college football playoff system, it must be time for Econbrowser to weigh in as well.
Employment Bounceback?
From Peter Hooper, Torsten Slok, Christine Dobridge, “Robust growth needed to avoid jobless recovery,” Deutsche Bank Global Economic Perspectives (Dec. 9) [not online]:
Commodity prices and the Fed
I’ve been discussing possible explanations for the recent tendency of the dollar prices of commodities to move together. On Friday we received a very useful data point for distinguishing between the different hypotheses.
Exchange Rate Policies
My colleague Charles Engel has a new paper circulated by the Dallas Fed entitled “Exchange Rate Policies”, which brings theory to bear on the topic. From the introduction:
Deficit links
Some quick excerpts of what others are saying.
The Employment Situation in Graphs
…and an initial read on monthly GDP.
Interesting Picture of the Day
Politico American Spectator’s Joseph Lawler Goes Nihilist
Be afraid, be very afraid…again. From Joseph Lawler
… I take yesterday’s CBO report as affirmation both that … the number of jobs created by the stimulus cannot be determined without making judgment calls about the underlying economic model …
Anemic recovery
Recent indictors continue to support the impression that we’re in the midst of a weak economic recovery.
CBO’s Assessment of ARRA’s Impact on Q3 Output and Employment
From CBO’s just released Estimated Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on Employment and Economic Output as of September 2009
:
…Economic
output and employment in the spring and summer
of 2009 were lower than CBO had projected at the
beginning of the year. But in CBO’s judgment, that
outcome reflects greater-than-projected weakness in the
underlying economy rather than lower-than-expected
effects of ARRA.
In other words, the continued deterioration of the economy through the first few months after the passage of ARRA was not due to the stimulus package; rather underlying conditions had deteriorated, and the economy would have been in a worse state in the absence of the package. This is similar to the points I made here: [0] [1] [2]