The FT's Beyond BRICS on Russia and the middle income trap http://t.co/jtNpWBc4On drawing on my work w/ Park & Shin http://t.co/NjWkRrnqvu
35 minutes ago
Category Archive: United States
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Chicago Fed: ‘Slower Economic Activity In March’
US economic growth slowed last month, expanding at a rate that’s moderately below the historical trend, according to the March release of theChicago Fed National Activity Index, a weighted average of 85 indicators. But the index’s three-month moving average (CFNAI-MA3) posted a somewhat brighter reading: -0.01 for last month. That’s in line with expectations and a signal that [...]
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No Time for Austerity: US Edition
With unemployment at 7.6% and an output gap of around 6%, it’s (still) not the time to embark on front-loaded spending cuts in the United States. Figure 1: Log GDP (blue), CBO baseline projection under current law (red), and potential GDP (gray bold). NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: BEA, 2012Q4 3rd release, CBO, Budget and [...]
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Our Long-Term Unemployment Challenge (In Charts)
The reasons why employment has lagged in the recovery remains a central challenge for macro policymakers, influencing the fiscal debate as well as figuring prominently in Federal Reserve justification for its current unorthodox policies. My colleague Dinah Walker points out a growing body of evidence that the problem of long-term unemployment is at the heart [...]
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Jobless Claims Are Stuck In Neutral… For Now
No news is good news at the moment for weekly jobless claims. Today’s update shows a small rise in last week’s new filings for unemployment benefits, and that’s a good thing, for now, considering what might have been. Recall that the numbers in March showed a disturbing tendency to rise, and rather sharply by the standards of [...]
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Why This Is the Worst Recovery on Record
The biggest economic debate is between Keynesians (who want more government spending and lower interest rates in order to fuel demand) and supply-side “austerics” (who want lower taxes on the wealthy and on corporations to boost incentives to hire and invest, and who see government deficits crowding out private investment). But both approaches have problems. [...]
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FOMC Minutes Signal End to QE
I usually enjoy the day FOMC minutes are released. It is one of the few releases those of us on the West Coast can read at the same time as everyone else without having to get up in what seems like the middle of the night. So I experienced a mix of surprise and disappointment when I [...]
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The Overdue U.S. Immigration Reform
Current Immigration Policy is Complex Of all possible economic reforms, the one most likely to increase incomes per person is to allow more people to move from where their productivity is low to where it is higher (Peri). Reform of immigration law is a timely topic in the United States, where a serious discussion of [...]
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The Stealth Sequester
So far, the much-dreaded “sequester” – some $85 billion in federal spending cuts between March and September 30 – hasn’t been evident to most Americans. The dire warnings that had issued from the White House beforehand – threatening that Social Security checks would be delayed, airport security checks would be clogged, and other federal facilities [...]
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Shouldn’t We Drug Test CEOs of Banks Receiving Federal Aid?
Conservative politicians, including Mitt Romney during his presidential campaign, supported legislation mandating drug testing for recipients of federal aid, such as: the unemployed, families in assistance programs — in general, citizens down on their luck or in trouble. Interestingly, none of these politicians has suggested drug tests for executives whose banks benefit from billions in federal aid [...]
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Should Reagan Get Credit for Bill Clinton’s Budget Surplus?
A friend recently wrote to suggest that Bill Clinton has gotten far too much credit for his budget surpluses. All he did, my friend told me, was to cut Reagan’s defense spending. Reagan’s massive expansion of the Department of Defense, he suggested, had succeeded in destroying the Soviet Union. By the time Clinton was elected, [...]
