Post Tagged with: "stimulus"

The Credit Writedowns Interview with President Bill Clinton

With a pressing unemployment problem depressing growth in the US, former president Clinton plans to demonstrate his five-year old public service community can create jobs in America while still implementing projects that achieve results globally. His focus during an almost two-hour long discussion with a small group of bloggers in New York made this clear.

Why aren’t we using monetary policy to stimulate aggregate demand?

As is often the case, the genesis of this post is a conversation initiated by Edward (Harrison) on the question of why we aren’t using monetary policy to stimulate aggregate demand. That question was posed here by Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution. The short answer that I gave Ed is that you can’t really use

The Big Interview with David Stockman

David Stockman was Ronald Reagan’s first Budget Director. He left the political world for things like Private Equity. Lately, he has been making headlines for his statements regarding the economy and fiscal matters. He says "In some ways Herbert Hoover got a bad rap." in this interview with the WSJ’s Alan Murray. Stockman lays out

Hatzius pegs a double dip at only 25 percent

Here’s Jan Hatzius, Chief US Economist at Goldman, talking to Steve Liesman on CNBC talking about the economy and taxes (Hat tip Joe Weisenthal). Hatzius sees significant growth risks but is more sanguine on a multi-year recovery scenario than I have been. &#

China is Still a Renegade Nation

A few years ago, Chris Dialynas and I wrote a piece which introduced the concept of “renegade economics”. It was derived from a Frank D. Graham’s 1943 essay titled, “Fundamentals of International Monetary Policy.” Graham, a Princeton University economist, wrote: “In international affairs we must therefore strive to reconcile the liberty of the individual, the

Anticipating the End of a Weak Recovery

By most estimates, the statistical recovery which began in the second half of 2009 in the US has been weak. Many had been talking about a V-shaped recovery early this year. However, given the magnitude of the imbalances in the U.S. leading up to recession, the underperformance of this technical recovery is not surprising. Now,

Galbraith: Thoughts on a Plan B

The following is a post by James K. Galbraith as originally published this Monday at the New America Foundation’s website. In July 2008, in a memorandum for the Obama campaign team and later published in Challenge,  I wrote as follows: If the above analysis is correct, the political capital of the new presidency risks being

Marshall Auerback Urges Job Guarantees Over Jobless Benefits

As you know, I have been back pedalling on my support for fiscal stimulus since late in 2009. I still think fiscal policy is effective – more so than monetary policy; quantitative easing is a bust because we are in a liquidity trap. But the allocation of government money has been politically motivated and wasteful.

One Small Step for Recovery, One Giant Leap Still Needed

Electoral disaster has a way of focusing the mind. Perhaps this is the best way to explain President Obama’s latest initiatives: an investment in the nation’s roads, railways and runways that would cost at least $50 billion, along with a permanent extension of the research and development tax allowance, which represents a further $200 billion

Why the U.S. economy is weak

My friend Rob Parenteau says "most professional investors are high frequency macro data and short run asset price driven."  He basically means they have no real macro analytical framework to use when making investment decisions. Rob says "it is just a video game for them, where they trace and extrapolate the recent momentum." Rob is

Home Sales: Up, Down or Sideways From Here

By Annaly Capital Management Existing home sales can’t go to zero, can they? They clocked in at 3.83 million on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis in July, down 27% from the prior year, half of the 2005 peak of 7.25 million and the lowest since the National Association of Realtors started keeping records in 1999.

Minack: If fiscal policy is dead, what does that mean for risk assets?

From Gerard Minack of Morgan Stanley (hat tip Scott): The past two years have demonstrated the high cost of these policy errors. More to the point, the private sector now seems leery of debt and aiming to increase saving. This matters a lot, in our view. It means that monetary policy is battling two headwinds.