In a new peak of econogeekiness for me, I actually watched the webcast of the announcement of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (a.k.a. the economics Nobel, or the fake Nobel, as detractors of the field put it). So I heard it announced in Swedish that Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University and Oliver …
The Great Macro Debate never ends. Reader Adam Ozimek writes, quoting me being snotty about rational-expectations macroeconomics:
“But has any of this contributed significantly to economic policymaking? Not that I know of, not yet. That may be the policymakers’ fault, not the economists’. But the standard policy prescription of
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The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize gave another push this afternoon to his administration’s proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, with a speech at the White House. The only thing I heard that was really new was that he busted the chops of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, saying one of its anti-CFPA ads—which claims that the …
So I’m in the heart of Obamanation this morning, the Greenmarket on West 97th Street in Manhattan. The woman standing next to me in line for some totally precious locally grown veggies asks what I think of Obama’s Nobel. “Seems a little premature,” I answer. She laughs, shakes her head, and we both start speculating on what could have …
Our pals at the American Mustache Institute have a new study out revealing that mustachioed men make more money and spend more of their income than the bearded and the cleanshaven:
The research found that Mustached Americans earned 8.2 percent more on average than those with beards and 4.3 percent more than the clean-shaven. People of
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Okay, this is gonna get wonky. Giuseppe Paleologo writes, in a comment to my post on Krugman vs. Chicago,
It is not true that:
“The central empirical prediction of the efficient market hypothesis, as laid out by Eugene Fama at the 1969 annual meeting of the American Finance Association, was that markets would move over time in
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Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced today that the government’s Making Home Affordable mortgage modification program has lowered monthly payments for 500,000 homeowners, beating a Nov. 1 deadline the administration set earlier in the year. I wish Barbara were here to tell us what this means (she’s off this week). The overall goal …
The weekly unemployment-insurance claims numbers are out, and the number of new claims—a seasonally adjusted 521,000—was the lowest since January. (Claims peaked in late March, at 674,000.) The four-week moving average, at 539,750, continues to trend downward as well. Good news. But man, what a slow trend! It’s like watching paint …
A reader asked, in reference to my column on the “Bond Bust Ahead,”
As interest rates climb, bond prices drop. I understand that part. But, for an “investor” who owns bonds to maturity how does this translate into losses? I still get the same coupon payment and my principal at the end of the term.(Agreed that with higher inflation my
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Catherine Rampell has the story in today’s NYT about the growing interest in the White House and elsewhere in Washington in a tax credit to entice businesses to hire. This was discussed as part of the stimulus legislation back at the beginning of the year but dropped. Now it’s back because, while the economy seems to be growing a bit, …
Robert Fisk’s report in the Independent that the Persian Gulf countries are planning to stop pricing oil in dollars by 2018 and start using a basket of currencies instead has caused quite the big stir today. Gold hit a new record of $1,043 an ounce as investors worried about the future of the dollar, and the Internets were aflame with …
My throwaway line that some people at the University of Chicago “reeeeaaaally didn’t like Paul Krugman’s article about the state of macroeconomics” has gotten so much traffic, thanks to a link from Krugman, that I feel obliged to go a bit deeper. My observation was occasioned by a conversation with a couple of mild-mannered, open-minded …
