The latest employment data are quite encouraging, though some may have overstated the case for enthusiasm.
Should the Fed worry about going too far?
I wanted to weigh in on the exchange between Kash Mansori at Angry Bear and Dave Altig at Macroblog.
Are the oil companies earning enough profits yet?
“Drivers Upset By Record Oil Company Profits”, reports CBS3 News in Philadelphia, and quotes one driver as describing the oil companies as: “Robbers, thieves, taking advantage of the people.”
Autos and the U.S. economy
A number of analysts have suggested that autos play a much less significant role in the U.S. economy today than they have historically. The data from 2005 would seem to call that conclusion into question.
The 2005q4 GDP report and the trade balance
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.