Monthly Archives: January 2013

Recently Professor Ronald McKinnon of Stanford published a book with a lovely title: “The unloved dollar standard”. Professor McKinnon´s main thesis is that to better stabilize the USA and world economies the unloved dollar standard has to be rehabilitated by … Continue reading →

It is said that NGDI is a more accurate measure than NGDP. Maybe the income data is easier to record? Anyway, they make up the two sides of the national income accounts. The product (NGDP) side measures production and sales. … Continue reading →

The title, obviously a “tribute” to Hitchcock, well captures both Bernanke´s “strenght & weakness.” I reproduce a chart that I put up earlier because it clearly shows that. Things are getting even more complicated because Vincent Reinhart, the man who … Continue reading →

Krugman and his aide-de-champ DeLong are NEVER wrong. Until somebody proves the contrary! This from David Cushman: In a previous article for Econ Journal Watch, I attributed to Paul Krugman a concurrence with the optimistic economic forecast put forward in early … Continue reading →

James Hamilton concludes: So although the headlines may sound scary, I do not think the GDP report changes the underlying fundamental picture. We knew that fiscal contraction, developments in Europe, and Hurricane Sandy would exert a drag on the economy, … Continue reading →

Summary and conclusion (on why Japan should not fight deflation) Contrary to the popular view, price deflation as a rule is always good news for the economy. When prices are falling in response to the expansion of real wealth, this means … Continue reading →

In Q3 the good (3.5% annualized growth) reflected the positive contribution of personal consumption expenditure which was reinforced by inventory investment. In Q4 the 0.1% contraction (annual rate) was due to inventory investment, government spending (defense) and exports offsetting the … Continue reading →

In an op-ed today at the WSJ, John Taylor writes: The Fed ratcheted up purchases of mortgage-backed and U.S. Treasury securities, and now they say more large-scale purchases are coming. They kept extending the near-zero federal funds rate and now … Continue reading →

Britmouse did a post that describes Scott Sumner´s “game of musical chairs” view of business cycles. I thought it interesting to see how it compares to the US situation. The first chart shows US W/NGDP, where W is the average … Continue reading →

In his recent “A brief history of macro – how we got here” at Free Exchange, M.C.K. does a disservice to the history of the field: By not mentioning Milton Friedman and, By including the paragraph below “implying” that Friedman … Continue reading →