Tag Archives: US/Global Economics

Robert Mundell And Supply Side Economics  The death of Nobel Prize winner Robert A. Mundell at age 88 has brought forth much discussion about his work and legacy.  Most of this discussion, such as several columns by Paul Krugman, have commented favorably on the work for which he was officially given the prize, several papers he wrote in the late 1950s and early 1960s while he was at the IMF.  These papers, drawing on the experience of his native...

When a Guatemalan family borrows money to pay a coyote to, hopefully safely, smuggle one of their children into the United States, we might yet hear the talking heads refer to it as the search for a better life. Perhaps. More likely it is done out of deep despair. Despair from seeing year after year of failed crops, of failed government, of their country being a failed nation, …. That’s despair, as in the lack of any hope; despair as in desperate....

More new pandemic lows in jobless claims: April jobs report likely to show over 1,000,000 new jobs added Repeating my recent top-line mantra, new jobless claims are likely to the most important weekly economic data for the next 3 to 6 months. With the number of those vaccinated continuing to increase, I expect an ongoing big increase in renewed consumer and social activities, with a concomitant gain in monthly employment gains like we saw in...

New and existing home sales vs. inventory I have a full plate in, you know, actual life today, so let me just drop this note here while we’re waiting for new home sales to be reported. I’ll update later when I have a chance. The evidence is crystal clear that, as to new homes (which are by far more important than existing home sales in terms of the economy), sales lead prices, which in turn lead inventory. Here are sales (red) vs....

Bellwether Bullard versus Sirenic Summers  So this is about the now getting to be passe topic of what will happen to inflation this year, with Larry Summers having gone out of his way to make a lot of noise in criticizing the expansionary fiscal policy partly passed but partly still under consideration in Congress as threatening a possible outbreak of 60s-70s style inflation at an entrenched much higher rate than we are seeing now.  He has put the...

A housing market quandary: two completely contradictory reports on renting vs. ownership There are three potential areas of concern for the economy in the next 12 to 24 months that I see: 1. Inflation – this looks temporary to me. Demand side effects will probably fade by the end of summer, and supply side bottlenecks should fade within the year. 2. Stock price evaluations – I strongly suspect these are near secular highs and are subject...

Why March’s big jump in real retail sales augurs well for big employment gains through summer Yesterday I wrote that the steep decline in new jobless claims in the past 4 weeks likely presages another big monthly employment gain, on the order of 1 million or more jobs. Another very big positive for the next few months in employment is the massive, stimulus-fueled jump in retail sales. As I have pointed out many times, real retail sales (blue...

By Steve Roth (originally published at Evonomics)t https://evonomics.com/how-redistribution-makes-america-richer/ You hear a lot about bottom-up and middle-out economics these days, as antidotes to a half-century of “trickle-down” theorizing and rhetoric. You’re even hearing it, prominently, from Joe Biden: [embedded content] They’re compelling ideas: put more wealth and income in the hands of millions, or hundreds of millions, and you’ll see...

March housing permits and starts – don’t get too excited Don’t get too excited about this morning’s big jump in housing starts for March. In the first place, it wasn’t confirmed in either total or single-family permits, which both remain down from December and January, and the latter of which is the least of all housing numbers: Also, the big jump in starts is mainly a rebound from February’s Big Texas Freeze. February and March starts...

When the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were first approved, it was clear that they were highly effective at preventing covid and that they would be in short supply for months.  The clinical trial data also suggested that, at least in the short-run, one dose of the vaccines would provide almost as much protection against covid as the two-dose protocol that was tested and approved by the FDA.  This led a number of economists and public health...