Share
Arnold Kling makes an important contribution to the debate about fiscal stimulus and double dip recessions which was also pointed out to me in the comments of my recent double dip post:
Paul Krugman provides an analysis showing arithmetically that the fiscal stimulus will have a declining contribution to GDP growth, even as stimulus spending increases.
What [...]

Share
Remember when I said the following:
GDP as reported
From my view point point, the interesting bit about GDP is NOT inflation (i.e. real vs. nominal GDP), but rather the fact that the number which is reported is a first derivative.  It is the change in GDP which is reported, not the actual number.  And, this is [...]

Share
For the period leading up to the panic last year, I had been warning of a rather severe recession. My view at the time was that what was needed was a realignment of America’s industrial organization away from finance and housing where serious overinvestment meant many firms would fail and asset prices would fall.This turned [...]

Share
Note: this post originally was posted without correct attribution to Bill Mitchell, who writes a blog called Billy Blog where he had posted the thoughts now attributed to him below. Bill is a well-regarded Professor of Economics at the University of Newcastle in Australia who blogs on macroeconomics, banking, and related topics.
I would like [...]

Share
There has been quite a lot of hub-bub today about President Obama’s fat cat remarks and his meeting with bankers exhorting them to lend. Let me tie these events in with a few other themes into a comprehensive picture of what is happening in politics and banking.
In a nutshell, we are getting a bunch of [...]

Share
This is an important question which Brad DeLong asks (Hat tip Mark Thoma). Here’s the logic:
Right now, if you ask the decisive members of congress—by which I mean the Blue Dog Democrats in the House, or the most conservative Democrats and most liberal Republicans in the Senate —why the president and the Congress are not [...]

Share
As I indicated earlier today, I generally see protectionism not as a second-best argument like Paul Krugman, but as something to avoid entirely.  Nevertheless, calls for more protectionism are being heard everywhere.  Gregory Clark, an Australian Professor who is a vice president at Akita International University in Japan, has made the case for protectionism against [...]

Share
"This is definitely a threat on the horizon," said Blaise Ganguin, the agency’s European credit chief.
Some 75 companies large enough to be rated face likely default in 2010 as the slow-burn effects of the crisis hit home. The default rate peaked near 13pc this year, the highest since S&P began to collect data.

This [...]

Share
The latest ISM numbers are in for the U.S., showing that the manufacturing sector expanded for a fourth consecutive month in November. The overall number was weaker in November at 53.6 than last month’s 55.7. But both new orders and production point to more of the same in the next month or two going forward.
[...]

Share
Below are three videos from a talk at the 2009 Economics of Peace Conference in Sonoma, CA, where James Galbraith talks about the Hyman Minsky concept of the instability of stability. This concept is fundamental to the behavioural psychology behind capitalist systems.  This is a case where stability invites greater risk-taking and eventually creates instability. [...]