From the Washington Post:
White House officials for more than a year have blocked a rule aimed at protecting endangered North Atlantic right whales by challenging the findings of government scientists, according to documents obtained by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
That’s the topic of my most recent research paper. Reader warning: this is a bit more technical than the standard Econbrowser post, so if you’re not a user of regression analysis, this may not be up your alley.
The Wall Street Journal had a very disturbing story on Wednesday about the “Fast and Easy” loan program of Countrywide Financial Corporation, many of whose mortgages were bought up by Fannie Mae.
The 0.6 ppt growth rate (SAAR) reported in the 2008Q1 advance release seemed to validate the President’s assertion that we’re not in a recession, discussed in this post.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported today that U.S. real GDP grew at a 0.6% annual rate in the first quarter of 2008, the same tepid growth rate we saw in the fourth quarter of last year.
Yes, exchange rate prediction once again. Last Thursday, Michael Moore (of Queen’s University Belfast) and I presented a new paper at the IMF’s conference on International Macro-Finance (co-sponsored with the ESRC funded World Economy and Finance Program). Here’s the paper [pdf].
There was a time one could plausibly argue that importing lots of goods and services, and borrowing a lot from abroad (financing the budget deficits that we’ve incurred since 2001) was a great idea. But at the time, about two and a half years ago, I made the following warning in a Council of Foreign Relations report [pdf]:
The United States faces a wide variety of possible outcomes, with the most dire having a significant likelihood. One real possibility entails the satiation of global investors’ appetite for U.S. Treasury securities, combined with an endless vista of government budget deficits. After several years of large losses on dollar assets due to depreciation, they then demand a substantial premium for holding dollar-denominated assets; either the dollar must weaken so as to make Treasury securities cheap, or yields must rise relative to those on other assets.
The speaker at our UCSD Economics Roundtable this week was Peter Hooper, chief economist for Deutsche Bank Securities. Here is a brief summary of his thoughts about the U.S. economic outlook.
The Federal Open Market Committee’s next meeting is scheduled for April 29/30, which the May fed funds futures contract currently anticipates will result in another 25-basis-point reduction in the target fed funds rate down to 2.0%. Here’s why I hope the Fed doesn’t do that.
From Reuters:
“We’re not in a recession, we’re in a slowdown,” Bush said at a news conference at the end of a two-day summit with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon.