Monthly Archives: May 2012

While exploring Blogs yesterday I came across this one from John Cochran at The Circle Bastiat: In a comment at Coordination Problem, “Is This How the Myth of the Laissez Faire Herbert Hoover Was Invented?” Barkley Rosser challenges Austrians with the following, “As it is, … Continue reading →

I won´t mention Greece. It´s the Eurozone “free-rider” par excellence and will likely only leave the euro if expelled! Let´s take a more representative agent, Spain, whose people are beginning to consider “life outside the zone”. Why´s that? The problem … Continue reading →

The chart shows nominal spending and output growth from 1800 to 2011. Important periods are highlighted. Some statistics: Period NGDP Growth  (St. Dev.) RGDP Growth (St. Dev.) Correlation 1801 – 1965 4.9%  (8.6) 3.9%  (4.9) 0.72 1966 – 1979(Great Inflation) … Continue reading →

David Leonhardt thinks growth trumpets: If you looked only at how strong the economy was in 2000 and 2004, the elections would surprise you. If you looked at the growth rate, however, the outcomes look unsurprising. Voters, it seems, have … Continue reading →

He´s back again with his “it´s structural” meme. In 2010, less than a year after becoming president of the Minneapolis Fed, Kocherlakota made a speech in which: He argued that unemployment was structural and That if the Fed Funds rate was kept … Continue reading →

A few weeks ago I wrote a post called “Why Brazil doesn´t grow”. Note that I didn´t ask why Brazil´s growth is dimming. I thought the lights had not been bright for some decades. Two recent articles deal with Brazil. … Continue reading →

In version I there was an airport over water in Japan, courtesy of fiscal stimulus. Fiscal stimulus now has brought you the renovation of a “Bridge to nowhere” in New Hampshire! There are certainly many more examples of “fiscal stimulus … Continue reading →

“Captain” Krugman auto proclaims himself a “dangerous voice” and wonders if he will be barred from entering the UK! Aha. I’m a “dangerous voice” for criticizing UK austerity policies, not to mention one of “those who”. Other dangerous voices include Martin Wolf, … Continue reading →

You know something is in the throes of death when someone says it´s dead and someone else asks “is it really dead?” That “something” is “Inflation Targeting”. The “someone” is Harvard´s Jeffrey Frankel and the “someone else” is the Atlanta … Continue reading →

In “The death of inflation targeting” he writes: It is widely suspected, for example, that the reason for the European Central Bank’s otherwise puzzling decision to raise interest rates in July 2008, as the world was sliding into the worst … Continue reading →