Monthly Archives: February 2011

Mark Sadowski recently “challenged” Scott Sumner to do a graph of Polish NGDP: Scott, But why this focus on Sweden, Denmark and Finland? Finland is not even an Indo-European language speaking country. Would it kill you to insert a graph … Continue reading →

A couple of days ago Scott Sumner put up a post on “What successful monetary policy looks like”. The showcase was Sweden. I travel over the “day line” to try an “experiment”, comparing Australia and New Zealand where both countries, … Continue reading →

Bernanke is at it again. In a speech last friday and in a new paper, he gives new life to the global savings glut hypothesis (GSG) that he first put forth in 2005 as an explanation for Greenspan´s “Conundrum” (the … Continue reading →

The graph plots three measures of “core” inflation from 1994 onwards. The period was chosen because while in the 1980´s, after the Volker Fed brought “core” inflation down from over 12% to a range between 3% – 5%, in the … Continue reading →

This was inflation week in both the UK and the US. So it´s not surprising that the inflation hawks were out in droves. So as not to burden the reader, just one reference to each country. After the release of … Continue reading →

In his Congressional Testimony Russ Roberts does not mince words: Over the last two years, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 has injected over half a trillion dollars into the US economy in hopes of spurring recovery and … Continue reading →

Likely never! Mistakes that were committed more than 70 years ago have been uncannily repeated over the last 3 years. This is Jeffrey Lacker being interviewed by Bloomberg: while accelerating inflation is not a done deal yet, it’s at this … Continue reading →

That´s two posts in one! First, Seattle is in the news: The rolling real estate crash that ravaged Florida and the Southwest is delivering a new wave of distress to communities once thought to be immune — economically diversified cities … Continue reading →

The Weekend Interview in the WSJ talks to Charles Plosser. It´s revealing. According to Plosser: …But might it be too late to stop an inflation spiral if the committee waits too long for confirmation of pricing pressure? “That’s why I … Continue reading →

In his “Inflation lessons from the Asian crisis”, Greg Ip tells the story summarized below: A financial crisis tipped east Asia into a deep recession in 1997-98, which spread to Russia and then the United States via Long Term Capital … Continue reading →