Category Archives: economics

It’s that time of year, when pundits get asked to prognosticate about the year ahead. The answers, as ever, are interesting mainly as sentiment indicators, rather than as any indication of what the future might hold. But the questions can … Continue reading →

Pablo Triana sends me an open letter he’s written to the Swedish central bank, telling them to please stop giving out Nobel prizes in economics to "flawed, unworldly, and dangerous theoretical finance constructs": At least two of the theories awarded … Continue reading →

Dean Baker sees the upside of the recession: You probably didn’t see this in the newspapers, but real wages rose at an incredible 14.8% annual rate over the last three months. The basic story is straightforward. While nominal wages have … Continue reading →

David Leonhardt on deflation, Wednesday: The drop in prices, which isn’t over yet, will make life easier on millions of people. It’s possible, in fact, that the current recession will do less harm to the typical family’s income than it … Continue reading →

The recession might be one year old already, but as anyone can see from this morning’s payrolls numbers — much worse than even the pessimists expected — it’s still getting worse, and there’s certainly no end in sight. Once upon … Continue reading →

Phil Gramm, Ph.D. (Econ): “There is this idea afloat that if you had more regulation you would have fewer mistakes,” he said. “I don’t see any evidence in our history or anybody else’s to substantiate it.” He added, “The markets … Continue reading →

This is why Treasury’s original TARP plan, to buy up illiquid assets, was doomed from the start, and why it’s good news we’ve moved on from there: J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. said Friday that its Level-3 assets increased $1.3 … Continue reading →

The normally dry Labor Department is adding increasing amounts of color to its payroll reports. Today’s begins: Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 240,000 in October, and the unemployment rate rose from 6.1 to 6.5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics … Continue reading →

I had a great lunch with Columbia’s Ray Fisman a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve been meaning since then to blog about one of the big problems with what you might call Freakonomics-style economics, where economists sift through statistical … Continue reading →

John Lanchester has a discursive review of a number of high-profile financial books in the latest New Yorker. Some of his points are well taken: he finds an old quote of Warren Buffett’s, for instance, about junk bonds, which applies … Continue reading →

Mish casts his mind back to April, when I declared with great confidence that "it’s pretty much impossible for the entire world to register negative growth in any given quarter". Let me change that a little: I still think the … Continue reading →

Paul Krugman on Paul Krugman: My first love was history; I studied little math, picking up what I needed as I went along… Always try to express your ideas in the simplest possible model… I have used the "minimum necessary … Continue reading →

The discussion of Paul Krugman’s Nobel Prize in economics is, I’m sure, going to get very political very fast. So it’s worth emphasizing that his work on currency crises and on economic geography — the former not even cited by … Continue reading →

James Fallows: Just in the last few days, I’ve heard separately from three friends who run objectively "viable" businesses that they are on the verge of closing permanently, or laying off much of their staff, because they can’t get short-term … Continue reading →

I asked Nouriel Roubini this morning whether there was any way of getting institutions to start lending to each other, rather than the Fed being the only game in town. I got this in response: savor it, it’s probably the … Continue reading →