Posts Tagged ‘funniest economist’
Capital Consequences
A rise in the minimum wage is likely to have uneven impacts across states. In states where the minimum is already above the federal minimum wage, such as California, Connecticut, Oregon and Washington, the impacts of a rise will be minimal. By contrast, in states such as Louisiana, Mississippi, and West Virginia, where wage increases…
Read MoreBigger Beijing
According to one measure, later this year China will overtake the US as the world’s largest economy, a spot held by the US since 1872. The measure used is purchasing power parity and it’s highly subjective and assumption laden. Worse, Chinese data can’t be trusted. That said, even using exchange rates the US is only…
Read MoreGross Growth
The first estimate of Q1 2014 GDP growth came in at a miserable 0.1%, surprising even the most pessimistic. The good news, household spending was up 3% and boosted GDP by 2.04%, its third best contribution in four years! The bad news, inventories clipped 0.57% off GDP while exports subtracted 0.83%, due in part to…
Read MoreFantastic Fischer
With his Senate confirmation guaranteed, Stan Fischer will soon become Vice Chairman of the Fed. He brings spectacular credentials. He was most recently Governor of the Bank of Israel where he did a masterful job of aggressively slashing interest rates and buying long-dated bonds and then raising rates as early as late 2009. He is…
Read MoreRecord Revenues
The federal deficit is shrinking fast and is expected to be just $492 billion or 2.8% of GDP in FY 2014. Similarly, state government finances are also rapidly improving. In FY 2013, state governments collected a record $846 billion — personal income tax receipts rose 10%, corporate taxes jumped 8% and sales taxes climbed 4%.…
Read MoreField’s Medal
The Friday File: To encourage academic excellence, prizes are often awarded for outstanding achievement. Turns out that at least for the Field’s Medal (awarded every four years to the world’s top mathematician under 40), winning isn’t helpful. While winners and losing contenders have similar levels of productivity until the Medal is awarded, after the award…
Read MorePricey Pads
While new home sales fell in March, they didn’t exactly plunge. The actual number of new homes sold last month was 36,000 down from a whopping 37,000 in February. While bad weather and lack of lots and credit are part of the reason, so are prices. The March median new home price was a staggering…
Read MoreRecord Recovery
The current recovery is now 59 months old, the average length of all post WWII expansions. The last three recoveries have been much longer; 92 months, 120 months and 73 months respectively. This recovery will also be a very long one. Inflation remains benign, unemployment is still very high, commodity prices are low, and the…
Read MoreImproving Indicators
With output at US factories, mines and utilities at an all-time high and capacity utilization at 79.2%, tantalizing close to the 80% level at which firms invest in new plant, increased capital spending will singlehandedly boost GDP by 0.25%, or $35 billion, in 2014. Capital spending has been stuck in neutral for so long because…
Read MoreQuirky Quarter
After expanding at an annualized pace of 4.1% in Q3 and 2.4% in Q4, expect Q1 GDP to come in below 1.5% and that’s an improvement based on stronger March data. Q1 will be weak because of dismal weather, very weak inventory accumulation after large increases in Q3 and Q4 and an unexpected decline in…
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