Category Archives: Macroeconomic policy

Money Supply, Inflation, and the Emperor’s (i.e., Central Banker’s) Nakedness

The Financial Times on Monday had two stories on inflation, one a lengthy story, the other a a comment, “The problem with inflation indices,” by Gideon Munchau, triggered by the fact that the Bank of England missed its inflation targets of 2% by over a percentage point (their Consumer Price Index increased at an annualized […]

Inflation Targeting: The Fed’s Excuse to Ignore Asset Bubbles?

Kudos for an excellent post, “Inflation Targeting is Flawed,” by Michael Shedlock at Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis. Like many other observers, we’ve criticized the Fed’s failure to consider, or even acknowledge, asset price inflation in its monetary policy decisions. Instead, the Fed and other central bankers focus on traditional price inflation, and stick their […]

"It is time to pause on free trade"

A provocative article by Jeff Faux at the Economic Policy Institute argues that US trade deficits have become so large and so chronic that we need to put the brakes on further trade liberalization until we get our house in order. And getting our house in order means increasing our domestic savings rate. For those […]

Larry Summers’ Grim View of Housing and Its Impact on Markets

This story in today’s Financial Times, “As America falters, policymakers must look ahead,” is remarkable because, as far as I can tell, it is the first time a prominent economist has come out and said the unwinding of the housing bubble is likely to have nasty consequences (actually, take that back, Paul Krugman had a […]

It’s Official: Democratic Presidents Produce Better Growth

So says Washington Monthly in “Red and Blue Economies,” citing some work by Cactus at Angry Bear. In his five part series on ” God Punishes Us When We (Collectively) Vote Republican” (here is part five) Cactus uses as his measure real GDP growth (growth less the increase in national debt) and determines that this […]