: We shouldn't bail out anyone who's been irresponsible enough to take on monstrous debt -- unless he runs a bank. http://t.co/y1eRwiHaS6
18 minutes ago
United States Channel: Latest Posts
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United States
Narayana Kocherlakota on Safe Assets and the Natural Interest Rate
Narayana Kocherlakota, President of the Minneapolis Fed, recently participated in a panel where he discussed the key challenges facing central banks. He viewed the safe asset shortage and the related inability of the Fed to push the actual market rate down to its natural interest rate level as problem number one. Readers of this blog know I [...]
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United States
Are You Ready for Some Fedspeak?
Ready or not, we should expect a week dominated by an even greater focus on Fed policy. There are four reasons: The economic data calendar is very light; Earnings season has ended; Many will be heading for the exits early, anticipating a holiday weekend; and finally Bernanke testifies on the economy before the Congressional Joint [...]
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Ed Dolan's Econ Blog
People are Drawing the Wrong Lesson from the IRS 501(c)(4) Scandal: We Need to Rethink the Whole Concept of Tax-Exempt Organizations
President Obama is shocked and angered that the IRS targeted certain conservative organizations for special scrutiny when they applied for 501(c)(4) tax exemptions as “social welfare” organizations. Republicans are just as shocked. The whole Washington political establishment is shocked, just shocked, that anyone, let alone the IRS, would try to stem the flow of political [...]
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United States
Pyromaniacs on the Potomac: The Problem With Obama’s Second Term
Six months into a second term and the Obama White House is on the defensive and floundering: Benghazi, the IRS’s investigations of right-wing groups, the Justice Department’s snooping into journalists’ phone records, Obamacare behind schedule, the Administration’s push for gun control ending in failure. Should the blame fall mainly on congressional Republicans and their allies [...]
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Ed Dolan's Econ Blog
US CPI Falls in April at Fastest Rate since 2008. Even so, could it be Overstating the True Rate of Inflation?
According to data released yesterday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Consumer Price Index fell in April at an annual rate of -4.35 percent. It was the second consecutive monthly decrease and the fastest rate of decrease since late 2008, when the economy was in free fall. The April decrease was largely attributable [...]
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United States
Dodged That Bullet
I was reading Robin Harding’s take on the possible nomination of Federal Reserve Vice Chair Janet Yellen for the top job at the Fed, and a chill went down my spine when he reminded me of this: Mr Bernanke’s own appointment in 2005 was a case in point. There were several candidates that year. According to people [...]
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United States
Labor Force Participation and the Unemployment Threshold
On Friday, my colleague Julie Hotchkiss shared in this space the results of her new research (with Fernando Rios-Avila, a Georgia State University colleague) on the recent and prospective behavior of the labor force participation rate (LFPR). The punch line, from my point of view, is this: Our results suggest that relative to the average LFPR over the years [...]
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Great Leap Forward
NEWS ALERT: FED ANNOUNCES ROUND FOUR OF QUANTITATIVE EASING!
In a surprising turn of events, the Fed announced this morning that it is ramping up its quantitative easing policy. As you know, it has been buying $85 Billion in bonds every month, boosting its balance sheet above $3.3 Trillion. However, that has had no perceptible impact on the economy, which is slipping back toward [...]
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United States
Clues To Watch For The End Of QE “Infinity”
So, apparently, according to Jon Hilsenrath, “QE to Infinity” is actually “finite” after all. With Ben Bernanke set to “exit stage left” in 2014 the question of who replaces him at the helm of the massive USS “Federal Reserve” will be important as to the future of the current course of monetary policy. One of the top contenders for that job is Janet Yellen. [...]
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Thoughts From Across the Atlantic
Air Traffic Control and Negative Airports
Flight delays at large airports in the U.S. in April were a disaster that could have been avoided. They are an example of government failure that resulted from furloughing air traffic controllers at both large and small airports, even though their productivity was higher at large airports. This was a deadweight loss to the economy [...]
