Little sign of the reversal in the trade deficit.
Gloomy GDP report
Very weak GDP figures produced a slight rise in the recession probability index and warrant a more pessimistic outlook for 2006.
Soaring commodity prices
Is U.S. monetary policy behind the surge in commodity prices?
Economic forecasting
The full post of the discussion about economic forecasting that I had with Professor Kashif Mansori of Colby College and Angry Bear is now up at the Wall Street Journal’s Econoblog. Here’s my bottom line:
Don’t ask for too much of your forecast or your policy, and it won’t disappoint you.
Or maybe you should read the whole thing.
When is it good to be a bad forecaster?
I’ve been engaged in a very interesting discussion with Kash at Angry Bear on economic forecasting which will appear in the Wall St. Journal’s Econoblog later this week. Kash has a couple of posts [1], [2] based on his contributions over at Angry Bear. Here are the remarks that I used to open the discussion:
Careful with that “e-waste”
As a service to California readers, I call attention to new state regulations on disposal of household waste.
Fiscal Exposure and Medicare Part D
Even if the new Medicare prescription drug plan’s implementation improves, that’s just the beginning of our problems.
Strange ideas about the Iranian oil bourse
The internet can be a good source of information about issues that aren’t adequately covered by the mainstream media. It can also be a font of considerable kookiness.
Oil market jitters
The February oil futures price on NYMEX has jumped $8 a barrel in the last three weeks. It’s useful to try to put this into a broader view of what’s going on in the world oil market.
The neoclassical paradigm
Do economists have a sensible way of thinking about the world?