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.
Commodities and the Fed: answering the skeptics
Judging from some of the reactions across the blogosphere (not to mention any number of our own dear readers), maybe I should take another stab at clarifying why I see the hand of the Federal Reserve in the most recent movements in oil and commodity prices.
Puzzled
I have been puzzled by the proposal for a tax holiday for gasoline purchases running from Memorial to Labor day (see [0], [1], [2]), with the objective of spurring the economy. First, the Federal tax is quite low, either in real or in relative terms. Second, the benefits that would accrue to consumers are probably pretty small, under reasonable assumptions.
Prospects for Federal Interest Payments to the Rest-of-the-World
I was struck at how Federal government interest payments to the rest of the world have risen even as interest rates have fallen.
Recession indicators
A couple of minor remarks on recession indicators.
Why new oil price highs?
West Texas Intermediate closed today above $115/barrel. Does that reflect changes in the fundamentals of world supply and demand? My answer is no.
Consumer Sentiment Indices: Do They Matter?
From Haver.com:
Michigan Consumer Sentiment Down Yet Again
April 11, 2008
By Tom Moeller
- The preliminary reading of April consumer sentiment from the University of Michigan fell another 9.1% m/m to 63.2. Consensus expectations had been for a lesser decline to 69.0. The decline dropped sentiment to near its lowest level since 1982.
Commodity arbitrage
Scott Irwin is the Laurence J. Norton Chair of Agricultural Marketing at the University of Illinois. He has been doing some fascinating research on the relation between spot and futures prices in agricultural markets that may shed some light on the role of speculation in recent commodity price movements. We are delighted that Scott agreed to share some of the results of his research with Econbrowser readers.
Food prices
How should a well-fed American react when some of the world’s poorest citizens in Haiti and Bangladesh riot over the rising price of food?
The G-7 Communique and the Dollar
Was this the new (reverse) “Plaza Accord”? From Bloomberg: