After hearing the President’s economic stimulus package, I’ve concluded that $600 is not going to help a family that is about to lose their house and down payment that they worked so hard to accumulate. We need a better solution.
I also believe that we are terribly miscalculating how many countries’ economies will be affected by […]

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Submitted by unsettling economics
Earlier, I mentioned are prolonged power outage. An invaluable article in our
local weekly paper reports that our IOU — the appropriate acronym for Investor Owned Utility — PG&E suffered much more damage than the publicly owned utilities in the region. Apparently, PG&E has been relatively negligent in maintenance, leaving its infrastructure more […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
What does the literature say about the efficacy of incentives for investment?
It’s a good time to teach macro, as there’s almost limitless material (for instance, one could have students critique the President’s principles, here) being provided by the ongoing debate over the desirability (see Jim’s post) and optimal structure of a discretionary fiscal […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

My feeble attempt above to imitate the inimitable Jessica Hagy’s excellent posts on her Indexed blog. She also has a new book “Indexed,” based on her blog postings. Freakonomics author Stephen Dubner “suspects she is a genius.”
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Submitted by Businomics Blog
Nonresidential construction will slow this year and next, according to the American Institute of Architects. (Details here.) Here are growth rates they are projecting:

Commercial / industrial
2008
2009

• Hotels
5.1%
-3.1%

• Office buildings
1.7%
-3.7%

• Industrial facilities
-3.8%
0.4%

• Retail
-5.7%
-3.6%

Institutional

• Health care facilities
5.6%
3.6%

• Education
5.5%
-0.1%

• Public safety
3.5%
0.4%

• Amusement / recreation
1.4%
-2.6%

• Religious
-1.0%
4.0%

Their forecast is in line with mine (though I don’t […]

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We received this email at our blog  so I thought I’d answer it?
Question: How does the media affect the economy and how will it affect the expected recession? 
I read this email at the same time that I turned on the television last night and tuned in to the Larry King Show and the headline was “recession”. […]

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Submitted by The Capital Spectator
Lately, we’ve been thinking a lot about alpha, a.k.a. investing talent. That includes the ever popular question: How much alpha’s available? The standard answer is that alpha’s limited, meaning that for every investor who beats a benchmark, the win must be offset with someone who trails the index. Alpha, in other […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
And Government’s “Transfer Bucket” Leaks:

The standard stimulus package doesn’t change incentives. It’s a check from the government. The hope is that the receiver will spend it. But when you just send out checks from the government, whoever gets stimulated is likely to be offset by someone who gets unstimulated.
The money has […]

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Submitted by Econbrowser
Everybody else seemed to hear Bernanke say he was in favor of fiscal stimulus as one approach to our economic problems. But I instead heard him articulate very intelligently the potential pitfalls of the strategy.
Menzie laid out very nicely on Monday the traditional concerns many economists have about trying to use new fiscal […]

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Submitted by A Dash of Insight
Trading lore says that they do not ring a gong at the bottom. At “A Dash” we are interested in any successful approach — fundamental or technical. We are open to human interpretation of data and that derived from systems. We have discussed a number of fundamental […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM
Appearing before Congress, Mr. Bernanke told Democrats what he thought they wanted to hear. The former academic economist blessed a “fiscal stimulus package,” as long as it is “explicitly temporary.” How new federal spending can be “temporary,” he didn’t say, as if a dollar collected in taxes or borrowed and then spent […]

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Submitted by CARPE DIEM

According to data just released by the World Federation of Exchanges, global stock market capitalization reached a new record of $60 trillion in 2007 (see top chart above). The increase in stock market value of $10 trillion during the year also established a new all-time record for the largest annual increase of […]

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