Category Archives: The dismal science

Swoopo and the Thrill of the Kill

I don’t know if any readers know Jay Leonhart, but his “Sometimes I Think” from Salamander Pie is my theme song. I cannot relate to a lot of behavior considered normal. So I hate to personalize this discussion, but the subject of this post involves one of those areas of human activity I find to […]

Unemployment insurance for the 21st century

By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns L. Randall Wray has a post up at New Deal 2.0 which puts forward an idea which is pretty innovative. I would label it a private sector replacement for unemployment insurance. It’s the kind of thinking that might bring Obama out of a policy cul-de-sac as the economy hemorrhages […]

Mishkin Defend Bubbles (and of Course, the Fed)

The press becomes more surreal with every passing day. If we didn’t all have a stake in the outcomes, this would make for great theater. First we have the absurd spectacle of bankers claiming that they are doing God’s work. Great! Then they should be willing to do it for free. I don’t recall the […]

Guest Post: Was it “Nobody Saw It Coming” or “Everybody Who Saw It Coming Was a Nobody”?

By Richard Alford, a former economist at the New York Fed. Since them, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side. A number of economists, economic policymakers, regulators, and central bankers have attempted to explain away their failure to both […]

Guest Post: Wall Street Journal Admits Economists Were Wrong, But Fails to Discuss their INCENTIVE for Being Wrong

By George Washington of Washington’s Blog. The Wall Street Journal admits this week that economists blew it: The pain of the financial crisis has economists striving to understand precisely why it happened and how to prevent a repeat… The crisis exposed the inadequacy of economists’ traditional tool kit, forcing them to revisit questions many had […]

Guest Post: On, and Beyond, Deficits

By DoctoRx, who writes at EconBlog Review:Introduction A few days ago, Naked Capitalism kicked off a series of posts on government deficits with a first-of-two posts by me. My Debate on Deficits, was followed by posts by Marshall Auerback, Rob Parenteau and Dr. Edward Harrison. My initial post was itself a response to Dr. Harrison’s […]

The choice is between increasing or decreasing aggregate demand

By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns. DoctoRx, Rob Parenteau and Marshall Auerback have each written articles here to bring clarity to some issues I first raised at the beginning of the month in my post, “The recession is over but the depression has just begun.” As I see it, the issue we are debating has […]

All Debt is Not Created Equal: Government Debt is NOT the Same as Private Debt

By Marshall Auerback, an investment strategist and analyst who writes for New Deal 2.0. A major shortcoming in an otherwise thoughtful post by DoctoRX on deficit spending is a traditional mistake in which analysts seek to analogise the expenditures of government with that of a private household or business. The government is sovereign. This fact […]

“Fed Self-Evaluation: Marking Monetary Policy to Model”

By Richard Alford, a former economist at the New York Fed. Since them, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side. It has been frequently charged that the Fed, under Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, kept interest rates too low […]

Debate on Deficits: A Reply from Rob Parenteau

Rob Parenteau, CFA, sole proprietor of MacroStrategy Edge, editor of the Richebacher Letter, and a research associate with the Levy Economics Institute, responds to DoctoRx’s post, “Debate on Deficits.” DoctoRx raises a wide swath of excellent questions regarding the correct approach to financial crises, the economic contractions they can induce, and the best way forward. […]

Guest Post: Debate on Deficits

We are going to feature a series of posts this week on the merits of the idea of using Federal deficits to stimulate an economy in severe recession or depression. The first offering is from DoctoRx, who writes at EconBlog Review: Part I. INTRODUCTION Robert Rubin’s home town of Miami Beach contains any number of […]

Munchau: Next Crisis Coming Sooner Than You Think

Wolfgang Munchau has a solid, thoughtful piece at the Financial Times which argues that the widely applauded rallies in stock and commodity markets are already looking very much like bubbles, and the efforts to contend with them (either directly, or as a result of the need to start reining in liquidity) is likely to kick […]

Quelle Surprise! Larry Summers Gives His Economic Policies an “A”!

Oooh, I can take only so much double-speak in a single sitting. The object lesson today is a Reuters article reporting on a Larry Summers speech, “Obama policies averted economic “abyss”: Summers.” Let us not forget that “Obama policies” in this case are “Larry Summers policies.” Obama has never displayed much interest in economics; he […]