Tag Archives: inflation

You’re reading the right blog, Presidents‘ Day edition No economic data today due to the Presidents’ Day holiday, so here is something else I ran across over the weekend. Former Federal Reserve Economist Joseph Gagnon critiqued a Paul Krugman column about the cause of inflation. He notes that the causes of this inflation are both supply and demand sided: To which Paul Krugman replied:Yours truly bought into supply chain problems as creating...

A note on producer prices and (possibly) cooling inflation One point I make from time to time is that, with seasonally adjusted data, YoY comparisons can miss, or at least lag, turning points. We *may* have such a situation developing with producer prices as evidenced by this morning’s report (Feb. 15). On a YoY basis, producer prices for finished goods (red in the graph below) are up 12.5%, while commodity prices are up 19.3%. Consumer...

Real Wages Grew During Two Years of COVID-19 After Controlling for Workforce Composition Sean Howard, Robert Rich and Joseph Tracy February 15, 2022 I propose you just read it. They are quite convincing. The bottom line is that real wages increased last year (the top line is nominal wages and yes I like to take figures of speech literally) This is interesting for two reasons. First, the vast majority of our fellow citizens would...

Bloomberg News reports an outbreak in Kentucky and Virginia after initial outbreak discovered at Indiana facility last week. Avian flu is nothing new, and as we continue to keep large quantities of poultry in ever increasing numbers in concentrated operations around the poultry processors, the occurrences are likely to become more severe and often. This is mostly because commercial poultry operations look like this: The amount of birds grown...

Dear Democrats: Yes, inflation is a problem [Update: I see where Larry Summers has obviously read my piece below, and says, “I agree with NDD!”  (Just teasing)] In the past few days, I have seen a spate of articles and tweets from prominent partisans and economists telling Democrats not to worry about inflation, either because it is a transient supply chain issue, or else because Biden’s infrastructure and “Building Back Better” plans will...

L. Randall Wray | November 10, 2021 If the global financial crisis (GFC) of the mid-to-late 2000s and the COVID crisis of the past couple of years have taught us anything, it is that Uncle Sam cannot run out of money. During the GFC, the Federal Reserve lent and spent over $29 trillion to bail out the world’s financial system,[1] and then trillions more in various rounds of “unconventional” monetary policy known as quantitative easing.[2] During the COVID crisis, the...

L. Randall Wray | November 10, 2021 If the global financial crisis (GFC) of the mid-to-late 2000s and the COVID crisis of the past couple of years have taught us anything, it is that Uncle Sam cannot run out of money. During the GFC, the Federal Reserve lent and spent over $29 trillion to bail out the world’s financial system,[1] and then trillions more in various rounds of “unconventional” monetary policy known as quantitative easing.[2] During the COVID crisis, the...

I haven't written about bitcoin in a long while, in part because it is somewhat irrelevant, like all notions of a future dominance of private currencies (another of Hayek's incredible blunders; more problems with Hayek here and here). Note that nation states are fine and well, and not going anywhere, and hence national currencies will remain dominant. Only a weak state without its own currency (El Salvador is dollarized; on that see here and here) would make bitcoins legal tender. But more...

The spike in inflation is not a concern – yet By now you’ve probably already read a fair amount of commentary on yesterday’s consumer inflation report for May. I’m going to cut to the chase as to my take right off the bat: 1. The primary driver of this inflationary spike is supply bottlenecks rather than increased demand.2. The inflationary spike has wiped out any “real” wage gains during the past 10 months.3. The inflationary spike is not...