The annual Minsky conference, co-sponsored by the Levy Institute and the Ford Foundation, was held this week in NYC. The audio transcripts of all the presentations (including one by yours truly) are online here: http://www.levyinstitute.org/news/?event=38 Update: I will add my powerpoint so you can look at it while listening to the audio. My presentation quickly … Read more
In a recent paper, Arnab Das and Nouriel Roubini compare exit from the euro area to a divorce. (See long form here, short form here.) When we hear that friends are heading for the divorce court, two questions immediately come to mind. Why did this arrangement, which seemed like a good idea at the time, … Read more
The following is an excerpt from The Reckoning: Debt, Democracy and the Future of American Power, with a forward by Dr. Nouriel Roubini, available in the United States on this week from Palgrave Macmillan and in Europe on 17 May. Moran, a former RGE vice president and geostrategy analyst, is now Director and Editor-in-Chief of … Read more
Since Paul Krugman kicked-off a heated discussion about Minsky’s views on banks, and because the annual “Minsky Conference” co-sponsored by the Ford Foundation and the Levy Economics Institute starts this morning, I thought it would be useful to run a couple of posts laying-out what Minsky was all about. This first piece will detail his … Read more
First of all, I should apologize for the cheesy movie reference, to which I am used to from my columns:)…. I am looking for a few food bloggers, both for this blog and also for Hurriyet Daily News, where I write econ. columns. Here are the details: For my blog, I have decided to accept … Read more
In the middle of its thorough analysis of U.S. labor markets, the New York Fed tucked in a direct look at whether persistently high unemployment can be plausibly ascribed to mismatches between the skill sets of unemployed workers and those skill sets required by available jobs. The operating hypothesis goes something like this: structural unemployment … Read more
No matter how sincere its intentions, what Beijing says it will do over the next few years is meaningful only if its policies are both internally consistent and do not violate external constraints. As I proposed two weeks ago, in this post I will try to lay out as logically as possible the economic options … Read more
Here we go again? Another spring is here and suddenly the economic data is looking weak again. Private-sector nonfarm payrolls rose in March by a slim 121,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis. That’s roughly half as strong as we’ve been seeing in recent months. In February, for instance, private job growth was a much stronger … Read more
The U.S. job numbers for March, released today, show moderate, although not spectacular short-term gains: 120 thousand new payroll jobs, unemployment rate down a notch to 8.2 percent. Long-term indicators are less healthy. In particular, as the chart shows, the employment-population ratio fell by 0.1 percent and remains just a fraction above the all-time low … Read more
How the Euro area (EA) will grow, according to Mario Draghi: The outlook for economic activity should be supported by foreign demand, the very low short-term interest rates in the euro area, and all the measures taken to foster the proper functioning of the euro area economy. In this post, I address Draghi’s point that the … Read more