Stabilization in the non-oil trade balance arrives. What needs to happen for adjustment to continue without a recession?
House prices still climbing
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) today released its house price indexes for 2006:Q2, which continue to show house prices climbing in all but five states, though with a significantly slower rate of increase than previously.
The labor market and the incipient slowdown
Some other aspects of the employment release in context.
Autos remain weak
Auto sales still a weak spot for the economy, but no big plunge yet.
Gasoline prices coming down
U.S. gasoline prices have been dropping and will likely fall further.
Net interest and factor payments in 2006q2
The message from yesterday’s NIPA release.
Inflation expectations
So where’s the surge in inflation expectations, now that the Fed has stopped tightening?
Heckuva job on Fiscal Policy!
Or, why I have to explain to my Money and Banking students that discretionary counter-cyclical fiscal policy is “off the table”.
More thoughts on the housing slowdown
How concerned should we be?
How Mobile Is Capital Internationally?
The issue of international capital mobility comes up time and time again. There is the worry of capital and associated production capacity moving abroad to China for lower wage rates, and if not to China, to the rest of the world to escape environmental regulations or to avoid corporate taxation. So how mobile is capital?