Neil Irwin at the New York Times (The Upshot) writes that “no one cares about economic data anymore” which he says is “good news.” He points to some indisputable facts, such as the steady growth in both employment and GDP over the past few years. His focus is mostly on short-run monthly or quarterly movements in economic …
Economists of all stripes are baffled by continued economic weakness in the United States. The easiest way to see the weakness is to compare where we are in terms of GDP today relative to historical trend growth, something we did in a previous post. It is clear that one of the main drivers of this weakness …
A strong 2014Q2 GDP report came out today, registering in at 4% annualized real GDP growth. This is good news, but it is worth looking at it in the context of the full recovery. Much of the recovery data was also revised, so we are updating our chart showing recoveries after every post WWII recession …
A month ago, we compared the recovery from the Great Recession to the recovery after every recession since 1950. It looked pretty bad. Real GDP growth for 2014q1 was revised downward today to -3.0% on an annualized basis. Yes, our reading of Table 1.1.3 of NIPA shows -3.0%, not -2.9%. Here is real GDP indexed to the …
A concern that we highlighted in yesterday’s post is that the only way the U.S. economy can generate significant consumer spending is through aggressive lending to borrowers with low credit scores. Here is more evidence supporting that view. In the chart below, we plot retail spending on appliances, furniture, and home improvement, or “home-related spending” (blue line) …
Census retail sales for May came out today, and they missed the consensus forecast slightly on the downside. But there is another pattern that may be more concerning. Let’s take a closer look at what has been going on with household spending. First, new auto purchases have been an important driver of household spending for …
It seems crazy to have such a heated debate on facts that are so easily measurable. Here we use the SCF from 1992 to 2010 to show the pretty unambiguous rise in wealth inequality in the United States. The housing boom hid the rise in inequality to some degree, but the crash in house prices …
Sorry we’ve been busy with the book, but will get back to posting soon. Here are some book-related links in case you’ve missed them: New York Times: The Case Against the Bernanke-Obama Financial Rescue Economist Free Exchange: The Opposite of Insurance Paul Krugman (NYT): Springtime for Bankers Book Interview on RT Boom/Bust Washington Post: Why Tim …
Paul Krugman has an excellent column this morning hitting many of the same themes we discuss in our new book. As he puts it: In the end, the story of economic policy since 2008 has been that of a remarkable double standard. Bad loans always involve mistakes on both sides — if borrowers were irresponsible, so were the …
In the face of large-scale economic shocks, enforcing debt contracts places an unbearable burden on debtors, who cut back their spending and send the entire economy into deep recession. One of the main arguments we make in our new book is that debt forgiveness makes a lot of sense when the economy experiences a large-scale negative shock that …
