Financial Times columnist Lucy Kellaway once wrote, “No management idea is too ridiculous not to be tried in practice.” That observation may apply to economic ideas as well. Just last week, when discussing economic stimulus programs, I stressed that to be effective, they needed to lead to consumption. If, as with the tax rebates of […]
Read more...Dean Baker goes full bore after two deserving targets, Bob Rubin and Larry Summers, at TPM Cafe. Key excerpts: Along with former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan, Rubin and Summers compose the high priesthood of the bubble economy. Their policy of one-sided financial deregulation is responsible for the current economic catastrophe. It is important […]
Read more...A Wall Street Journal article, “Japan Worries It Faces the Return of Deflation,” contained an argument I found unconvincing: In the U.S., some economists say deflation may occur if market conditions deteriorate much further and job losses proliferate. But Teizo Taya, an adviser for Daiwa Institute of Research and a former policy board member of […]
Read more...Edmund Phelps, a Nobel Prize winner, casts doubts on Keynesian remedies because Keynes himself came to question them. This Financial Times piece provides no answers but raises some interesting questions. But sadly, there may be no answer for the first question he asks: What theory can we use to get us out of the impending […]
Read more...Note that technically, the famed economics prize is the “The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2008.” From the press release (hat tip reader Jørgen): Patterns of trade and location have always been key issues in the economic debate. What are the effects of free trade and globalization? What are […]
Read more...John Cassidy, in the New York Review of Books, discusses George Soros’ latest book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What It Means, emphasizing how the storied investor’s views differ from those of the efficient markets/rational expectations school of economics. It also weaves in a wide-ranging discussion of the […]
Read more...It’s hard to discern what took place in a closed-door session at a remove, but some of the tidbits coming from last weekend’s Federal Reserve conference at Jackson Hole were worrisome. Note I didn’t have this sense about last year’s meetings, based on a reading of Jim Hamilton’s commentary (which may simply mean Hamilton was […]
Read more...The question in the headline may seem odd, but consider. Many of the things we want are desires adeptly created by marketing and/or peer influence. It’s easy to recognize in teen agers. Cassandra brings us a more vivid example of how ideas and desires can be influenced: I was simply wondering whether all this is […]
Read more...Readers may know I am not much of a fan of Larry Summers’ occasional comments in the Financial Times. He has a tendency to come forth with views of how things work that sound nice but too often are at odds with facts on the ground. His latest offering scores better than previous offerings as […]
Read more...Go Willem Buiter! The London School of Economics prof and former Bank of England and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development official has been saying for some time that the Fed suffers from “cognitive regulatory capture” and has been far too responsive to the needs of Wall Street. It’s been puzzling to watch his detailed, […]
Read more...Off and on, usually provoked by the release of a new study, the media will turn to the question of happiness and incomes. While the Wall Street Journal has exhibited a tendency to tout research that shows that the rich are happier, the results are far less clear-cut. Once a certain income level has been […]
Read more...An article in today’s New York Times, “Illusions About Inflation,” by Mark Hulbert is based on the sort of research that gives economists a bad name. The piece references an a academic paper “Inflation Illusions and Stock Prices,” by John Campbell and Tuomo Vuolteenaho, that argues that investors analyze stocks incorrectly during inflationary times because […]
Read more...Go read a very nice article on Nouriel Roubini in the New York Times. It doesn’t go into too much detail about his ideas, it does seek to place him among other economists. My favorable opinion of him went up when I learned that even though he has high level math skills, his academic work […]
Read more...A classic from Tim Knight (click to enlarge):
Read more...I’m talking platform leverage – the sort of leverage you can get in a proxy battle by putting a page like this in front of millions of people, many of whom may in fact own your stock, the week before the meeting, for free: Or, the leverage in media you can get by interjecting a […]
Read more...